The Reporter Who Knew Too Much

by Mark Shaw

  A mysterious and significant aspect of the events following the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas has never been explored publically, although it must have occurred to crack reporters covering the case as well as authorities investigating the tragedies. The important question—why did Lee Harvey Oswald, presumably fleeing from the police after the assassination, approach Patrolman J. D. Tippit’s car—in broad daylight with witnesses standing by—and shoot the policeman three times, although he had not said a word to Oswald.

  Oswald had managed to slip away from the scene and was—up to that point—not a reckless one. A man who knows he is wanted by the authorities after a spectacular crime does not seek out a policeman usually, unless he has decided to givehimself up, and certainly Oswald was not doing that. By shooting Tippit instead of trying to make himself inconspicuous, Oswald put himself in double jeopardy. His act almost guaranteed his arrest. Why? A whodunit fan would infer that the policeman knew something about Oswald that was so dangerous [the policeman] had to be silenced at any cost, even Oswald’s chance at escape and freedom.

  Kilgallen’s relentless pursuit of the truth, her asking questions no other reporter was asking, caused author Mark Lane, whom she had first met when he was a New York state legislator, to write of Kilgallen: “She was a very, very serious journalist. You might say that she was the only serious journalist in America who was concerned with who killed John Kennedy and getting all of the facts about the assassination.”

  25 In his book, Dallas and the Jack Ruby Trial, Judge Joe Brown said he had “talked to the jury” and they had told him “Belli offered them no alternative but either an acquittal or an extreme penalty.” Brown also scolded Belli for never fitting the facts to the possibility of “murder without malice, a homicide committed under extreme passion created by passion or horror, or resentment or horror that renders a mind incapable of cool reflection” so the jury had a choice for a conviction carrying a maximum sentence of five years.

  CHAPTER 17

  In early April 1964 with the Jack Ruby trial in the rear view mirror, Dorothy Kilgallen met with attorney F. Lee Bailey in New York City. He was the appellate counsel for Dr. Sam Sheppard, the Cleveland physician imprisoned for killing his wife.

  During a private conversation as spring temperatures abounded, Kilgallen provided Bailey with crucial information regarding Sheppard’s trial never divulged before. More about the case would be included in Kilgallen’s book, Murder One.

  While Kilgallen added text to the manuscript, RFK spoke to JFK presidential confidant Ken O’Donnell about the Dallas assassinations. He recalled, “I mentioned the Syndicate—the Mob—as a possibility. I’m certain RFK thought the Mob had been involved. He suspected Carlos Marcello, the New Orleans capo to whom Jack Ruby had ties…All he kept saying was ‘They should’ve killed me,’ without indicating who they were.”

  In a far different case than Ruby’s, that same month Kilgallen was shocked when NYC detectives arrested comedian Lenny Bruce. He had given a profanity-laced performance in Greenwich Village. The charges were based on a law prohibiting “obscene, indecent, immoral, and impure exhibition and entertainment that would tend to the corruption of the morals of youth and others.” For each of the three charges against him, Bruce faced a maximum punishment of three years in prison.

  Free speech was on trial. Many noted celebrities supported Bruce: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Norman Mailer, Paul Newman, Bob Dylan, Woody Allen, Susan Sontag and John Updike. Kilgallen added her name to the cause.

  When Bruce’s trial ensued, Kilgallen, a staunch defender of free expression, was a defense witness. Asked about the artistic merit of Bruce’s act, she answered, “I think Lenny Bruce is a brilliant satirist—perhaps the most brilliant I have ever seen—and I think his social commentary, whether I agree with it or not, is extremely valid and important.” Despite Kilgallen’s plaudits, the jury convicted Bruce.

  An appeals court reversed the decision. The reversal caused Bruce’s trial counsel to exclaim, “I have to think that [Kilgallen] had a lot to do with the ultimate result of the case. The briefs that were filed placed an enormous reliance on Kilgallen, again because of what she is and what she stands for.” Later, Kilgallen, her impact as a media icon once again revealed, caused a stir when she told reporters, “Lenny Bruce is a very moral man trying to improve the world and trying to make audiences think.”

  Meanwhile, day by day, Kilgallen continued to investigate the Dallas assassinations. She used her stature as an investigative reporter and media star to full advantage. One evening, a person close to the Warren Commission probe contacted her out of the hundreds of reporters who had covered the Ruby trial. He said he had a copy of Ruby’s testimony before the commission and trusted her to reveal it to its best advantage. Respect for Kilgallen’s character had won the day. She made plans for a clandestine meeting to receive the 102-page transcript.

  Kilgallen told no one of her secret. Days later, the documents were in her hands. She knew she would have a chance to read Ruby’s testimony before any other reporter did so. She could also publish it for the world to read.

  When Kilgallen informed her Journal-American editors of the unexpected good fortune, they were ecstatic. The publisher decided to rush the documents to print as soon as possible. The paper would have an exclusive.26

  On August 9, 1964, the Journal-American published and The Associated Press circulated the story across the country and around the world in three parts. Included were comments by Kilgallen. Her opening words were:

  What you are about to read is the transcript of the testimony given by Jack Ruby to Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of President Kennedy.…The transcript is 102 pages long and is a word-by-word account of the three-hour, five-minute interrogation of Jack Ruby—the third member of a triangle that has become an irrevocable part of history.

  The initial copy employed the headline, “Stories Quote Ruby Saying Slaying Was His Own Idea.” Excerpts included:

  Jack Ruby, in a purported secret testimony given to the Warren Commission, said it was strictly his own idea to kill Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of President Kennedy. In a copyrighted story Tuesday by Journal-American columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, Ruby was quoted as having told Justice Warren June 7, ‘I was never malicious toward this person. No one else requested me to do anything. I never spoke to anyone about attempting to do anything. No subversive organization gave me any idea. No underworld persons made any effort to contact me. It all happened that Sunday morning.’

  On August 20, under the banner headline “In Tough Spot, Ruby Told Justice,” and the sub-headline, “Club Owner Rips Lawyer on Motive,” Kilgallen directly quoted Ruby as having told Chief Justice Earl Warren, “Boys, I am in a tough spot, I tell you that.” Ruby, according to Kilgallen’s reading of the transcript, then turned his wrath toward trial counsel Melvin Belli. Ruby accused his lawyer of distorting the facts as to whether Ruby’s killing of Oswald was premeditated, swearing it was not.

  Since Kilgallen had interviewed Ruby twice, and had labeled him a “gangster” in one of her columns, she was dubious of his Warren Commission testimony. She recalled his telling her he was “scared,” and like a shrewd defense attorney always seeking the tiniest of clues to abnormal testimony, in an August 19 story, she focused on one aspect of Ruby’s story that did not make sense to her. It was his insistence that he “went to a newspaper office and demonstrated a twist board for one of the employers” after learning of JFK’s death. She wrote, “I find it hard to reconcile the picture of Jack Ruby performing on a twist board less than 24 hours after the President’s assassination with the bereaved figure of a man [who says] he walked around in a state of emotional shock.”

  Commenting on Kilgallen’s “scoop,” an Associated Press article announced: “According to the New York Times, ‘[Warren Commission] officia
ls have expressed distress concerning the Journal-American article which, on superficial examination appeared to contain verbatim secret testimony…Miss Kilgallen said she obtained the actual transcript of Warren’s interview with Ruby from sources close to the Warren Commission in Washington.”

  A Warren Commission attorney was livid at the disclosures. He asked FBI Director Hoover to investigate the leak. In the Herald Tribune, the headline read: “Outcry Over Ruby Lead Brings a Federal Probe.” Agents with orders to discover Kilgallen’s source scattered about. Interviews were conducted with anyone who was in the room when the interviews occurred. Those close to the investigation—including attorneys, district attorneys, a jailer, and various secretaries—became suspects. True to her nature of protecting sources or anyone suspected of being a source, Kilgallen made a statement. The young girl turned woman whose father had always told her to tell the truth said the court reporter transcribing the Ruby interviews was not the source.

  Addressing the FBI probe, Kilgallen, irritating Director Hoover and the Bureau, posted a Journal-America column entitled, “Maybe You Didn’t Know.”

  She wrote:

  From what I have read, I would be inclined to believe that the FBI might be more profitably employed in probing the facts of the case rather than how I got them—which does seem a waste of time to me.

  At any rate, the whole thing smells a bit fishy. It’s a mite too simple that a chap kills the President of the United States, escapes from that bother, kills a policeman, eventually is apprehended in a movie theater under circumstances that defy every law of police procedure, and subsequently is murdered under extraordinary circumstances.

  The Warren report made a great effort to note that the FBI and the Secret Service were delinquent in their duty, and that the press media—TV, radio and newspaper—also were responsible for the confusion that made Oswald’s murder possible. Baloney. Oswald was not killed by a newspaperman. He was killed by a nightclub owner well-known to the police—Jack Ruby. How could the Warren Commission pretend to forget that?

  In a subsequent Journal-American column titled “Search for the Truth,” Kilgallen observed, “[The Warren Commission Ruby testimony] is a fascinating document—fascinating for what it leaves unsaid, as well as what it says.” Commenting on Ruby’s state of mind, she added, “He opened the floodgates of his mind and unloosed a stream of consciousness that would have dazzled a James Joyce buff and enraptured a psychiatrist. There was a great deal of fear inside Jack Ruby that Sunday in June [when he testified]. He feared for his own life, he feared for the lives of his brothers and sisters.”

  Kilgallen did not disclose whom Ruby feared. Nevertheless, her words put those to whom she referred on notice that she was not about to drop her investigation.

  Regarding the Warren Commission agenda, Kilgallen wrote, “It seemed to me after reading the testimony three times that the Chief Justice and the general counsel were acutely aware of the talk both here and in Europe that President Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy. They took pains to prove to themselves and the world that no conspiracy existed.”27

  On August 21, two FBI agents, each feeling the pressure to learn Kilgallen’s source, visited her. They were upset when she told them (according to an FBI file secured through the Freedom of Information Act), “I would rather die than reveal the source” during an hours-long interview at Kilgallen’s townhouse. She did not have a lawyer present to protect her rights. Such statements were in line with the fearless journalist’s credo, “Things said to a reporter in confidence should be kept in confidence.”

  On August 22, Kilgallen read newspaper accounts, including one posted in the Boston Sunday Herald under the headline “Jack Ruby’s Stories Seen Ruin of Warren Commission.” In the article, Melvin Belli blasted Kilgallen’s premature exposure of Ruby’s testimony before the Warren Commission. Belli stated that it had “destroyed the integrity” of the Commission’s investigation.

  Of more interest to Kilgallen was a Belli comment. He said, “Ruby pleaded with me not to put him on the [witness] stand. He told me ‘If I go on they’ll cut me to ribbons.’” Kilgallen knew that Belli had twisted the words around. She knew it was Ruby who wanted to testify and Belli who had forbid him from doing so.

  The crack investigative reporter also realized that Belli’s quote conflicted with Ruby’s Warren Commission statement to Chief Justice Warren. She had exposed it in her Journal-American articles:

  I wanted to get on the stand and tell the truth [about] what happened that morning, [but Belli] said, “Jack, when they get you on the stand, you are actually speaking of a premeditated crime that you involved yourself in.” But I didn’t care, because I wanted to tell the truth. [Belli] said, ‘When the prosecution gets you on the stand, they will cut you to ribbons.’

  Kilgallen realized that Belli was lying. In addition to her February 1964 column alluding to suspicions about Belli’s defense, and her questions about Ruby’s contradictory behavior the day after JFK was shot, Belli’s false statements in the Boston article triggered additional suspicion on her part as to the potential for a cover-up. This convinced her that the investigation into JFK and Oswald’s deaths must continue unabated.28

  On a daily basis, Kilgallen gleaned information from her Dallas sources. She learned that Jack Ruby had multiple friends among the Dallas police department. Many of them frequented his strip club, The Carousel.29 Kilgallen’s reputation and clout permitted her to receive the original police log as reflected in radio communications. It chronicled police activities by the minute directly after the shooting of the president.

  Left out of the Warren Commission report, Kilgallen realized, was a startling disclosure. It detailed how Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, seated in the first car in the president’s motorcade, reacted to shots fired. He told officers to “get a man on top of the overpass and see what happened up there.” This story was printed in the Journal-American on August 23, 1964 under the headline, “The Police Mix-Up in Dallas.”

  After beginning the article with the words, “A previously unpublished and private report by the Dallas Police Department of events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy conflicts sharply with some public statements of Dallas police officials, “Kilgallen then seized on the conflicting statements. She wrote that Curry’s reaction and subsequent orders were at odds with what he told reporters 24 hours after the assassination. He had said the shots originated from the Book Depository building. In addition, Kilgallen wrote, Curry had informed reporters that his first order to officers was to have officers surround the Book Depository building. In conclusion, Kilgallen wrote, “…as we see from the Police Department’s official version of events, Chief Curry’s immediate concern was not the Depository, but the triple-tiered overpass overhead, which the President’s car was moving at about eight miles an hour when the fatal shots were fired.”

  In effect, Kilgallen now called the Dallas Chief of Police a liar. The list of enemies grew—Curry, Hoover and the FBI, the CIA, The Justice Department, Warren Commission members and attorneys, and anyone implicated in the JFK and Oswald assassinations.

  26 One may only imagine, in that day and age without hundreds of television outlets and no internet and thus any social media, what an incredible “exclusive” Kilgallen’s access to, and exposure of, Ruby’s Warren Commission testimony was in light of its historical importance. Perhaps later disclosure of the Nixon White House tapes by the Washington Post may provide a comparison but regardless, printing Ruby’s testimony for the world to read must be considered a crowning moment in a journalistic career matched by few, if any, reporters before Kilgallen’s era or since.

  27 Larry J. Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of The Kennedy Half Century, agreed with Kilgallen’s statement. He wrote, “The Warren Commission was doomed from the start, because Washington power brokers, led by the new
president [Johnson] himself, were far more interested in preserving domestic tranquility that in finding the full truth. They wanted a report that would calm citizen’s jangled nerves by reassuring them that a lone nut named Lee Harvey Oswald had acted completely on his own.”

  28 Earl Ruby later confirmed Jack’s demands to testify, and Belli’s refusal to let him do so. It was one reason Belli was fired shortly after the trial.

  29 Addressing Oswald’s killer’s popularity with police, Author Seth Kantor said Earl Ruby witnessed it firsthand. When Jack invited him along to police headquarters to “see some of my friends,” Earl told Kantor, “it was ‘Hi Jack, Hi Jack, Hi Jack’ all the way down the hall” as they encountered officers.

  CHAPTER 18

  At FBI headquarters in Washington, J. Edgar Hoover displayed his personal anger at Dorothy Kilgallen. In the famed reporter’s dossier obtained by this author through the Freedom of Information Act, the Director, in his own handwriting, posted piercing remarks in the margins.

  The comments related to the facts she included and conclusions reached in the Journal-American stories. Hoover wrote “WRONG” in longhand next to her comment about the “man on the overpass.” Hoover also wrote “WRONG” beside the famous columnist’s specification of the time when Chief Curry ordered police to check the overpass.

  Regardless of Hoover’s efforts or anyone else’s, Kilgallen was not deterred. Determined to learn the truth, she actually became an amateur detective. This included attempting to re-create part of what happened on November 22 in Dealey Plaza. To do so, she relied on the Warren Commission testimony of a steamfitter named Howard Brennan. He had provided a description of an alleged shooter permitting police to release a physical description.