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Full text of "Where Were You? America Remembers The JFK Assassination
"
See other formats
SARASOTA
AN LL
Companion to the
Special Two-Hour
Documentary
Event
WHERE WERE You?
COMPILED AND EDITED BY Gus Russo anp HARRY Moses
FOREWORD BY Tom Broraw
NOVEMBER 22, 19113
A policeman’s wife was fetching their sick child
from school. A young shoe-store manager had no
idea what lay in wait for him that day. A future
president was tending to his farm. A future vice
president was standing on the steps of his college
library. A Georgetown student was looking
forward to playing the piano for the president
when he returned to Washington, DC, that
evening. A future movie star was attending his
second-grade art class.
Then the news rang out across airwaves,
through telephone lines, and by word of mouth,
plunging the country into shock and sorrow. It’s
hard to imagine how the last fifty years would
have unfolded if President John F. Kennedy
had lived. Would Vietnam have dragged on
until 1974? Would Nixon have come into power?
It’s difficult to say—but, combining evocative
archival images with the unique, first-person
stories of those who lived through it, Where
Were You? says what the history books can’t
and offers a fresh look at what was, what is, and
what might have been since that fateful day.
In the two-hour NBC documentary
event that this volume accompanies, special
correspondent Tom Brokaw interviewed people
close to the tragedy as well as former heads
of state, politicians, authors, journalists,
performers, musicians, and more. He asked
them five simple questions, starting with: Where
were you? Together, their words paint a rich and
moving picture of a hopeful nation tw asunder
by grief. It will remind those who live.\ \\ of
a pivotal moment in American history, | {it
bears witness for all who follow.
100 WEST DEARBORN ST.
ENGLEWOOD, FL 34223
31969022001 464
WHERE WERE You?
America Remembers the JFK Assassination
COMPILED AND EDITED BY
Gus Russo AND Harry Moses
Foreword by Tom Brokaw
LYONS PRESS
Guilford, Connecticut
An imprint of Globe Pequot Press
Dedicated to the generation of Americans who were alive on November 22, 1963
To buy books in quantity for corporate use
or incentives, call (800) 962-0973
or e-mail premiums@GlobePequot.com.
Copyright © 2013 by Gus Russo and Harry Moses
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information
storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions
Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.
Lyons Press is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.
Title page photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. All archival photos courtesy of interviewees,
except Mike Barnicle: Boston University; Harry Belafonte and JFK: JFK Library; Joseph Califano:
Columbia University; Robert Caro: Newsday; Jimmy Carter: Carter Center; John Glenn 1962:
NASA; Richard Goodwin: JFK Library, Doris Kearns: Colby College; John Kerry: Seth Poppel
Yearbook Library; Peter, Paul, and Mary: JFK Library; Clay Shaw: Tulane University; Andrew
Young: AP Photo Images. All interview stills courtesy of NBC News.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data
Russo, Gus.
~ Where were you? : America remembers the JFK assassination / compiled and edited by Gus Russo
and Harry Moses ; foreword by Tom Brokaw.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-7627-9456-0
1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963—Assassination. I. Moses, Harry. TI. Title. HI.
Title: America remembers the JFK assassination.
E842.9.R877 2013
973.922092—dc23
2013030984
Printed in the United States of America
10987654321
Interviews with the contributors who appear in this book often lasted an hour or longer. In
many cases, what appears in the Where Were You? television special distills those sessions to
justa few minutes. What follows in this book are selections from those interviews that have
been edited to conform to prevailing standards of accuracy, grammar, style, and usage.
CONTENTS
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PART ONE: DALLAS
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Jobn Brewer and Ray Hawkins: ...... 4. ...2.5 a 46
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OE PMI ee eee eee 74
WMC. Se es Gt ee ee ey ee ee 81
PART TWO: SOLEMNITIES
ecmim@alinamo es 2 2. 2 2 5 4 ee le ed 2 se 2 eee 93
Toe Rokare T T E 104
Richard Goodwin and Doris Kearns Goodwin ........... S
PART THREE: POLITICS )
ME Barni dle o a a a ke ee 129
Ip beleo a a ee 134
PMN Koun a ee eh Se ek ee 145
OTecmyuingWien 2. 5... sss Fa oes aoe oe eee 150
Pead R Eves. G6 5.04 ee koe Me ee ee Be a e 165
ane ehnaiam 9. we ee ew 177
Eain O a 5 . sons baw B a we we eb ee ke ce 184
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Bil Daley a ee ETETE EE Sore Re eee eee OS
E E a a a a a aa a ee a a a DIGS:
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Josepha bicer i. ae E 221
CONTENTS
Joba Keny- Ao yi. Se ge 226
Chine Maaher a iene ea ee ae 232
PART FOUR: CONTROVERSY
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(@ yume A eer antag Qe eset eg en ee 255
Roa an e a nope e can eee a 262
Mike kenno. ae a a a Gl
Robert Croden, ©... 5 & =) Mg 277
Vincent Buetiosit: . .-jp- y 287
PART FIVE: CULTURE
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Nancy Olson Livingston... --- + setter tt 315
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oe a aaa a a 329
Peter varrov and Noel Paul Stookey a 2 ee 335
e a ‘l 347
eer DANTO oa Gok: a cee nae 354
Sonny Jurgensen, Carl Kammerer, and Bobby Wihitehcll: 295 === 356
Sikh hi eo ea Re 363
geen opier 2a... 2yA\a tee: a iam acen ee ati ue 375
E E ee RR Dik 382
w . clon a 4) ae ep em meee ec 386
Nelenowlede iments (hey. Oe eee ee eee 397
a I er ct ee 398
Aboue Eor . 0 oo ieee ncn een manera rae 408
FOREWORD
November 22, 1963—a day that began with John Fitzgerald Kennedy
making a short flight from Fort Worth to Dallas for a motorcade designed
to take the young president through the streets and into the hearts of
Texas voters. It was a momentous event for Lone Star State politics, but
for most Americans it was just another late autumn day.
The wife of a doomed policeman was fetching a sick child from
school. A young shoe store manager had no idea what lay in wait for him
later that day. A future president was tending to his peanut farm. One of
his successors had just finished a high school class. A future vice presi-
dent was standing on the steps of his college library. A big-city preacher
was meeting with folks in a country church. A Georgetown student was
looking forward to playing the piano for the president when he returned
to Washington, DC, that evening. A future movie star was attending his
second-grade art class.
An ordinary day—until suddenly first radio and then television
broadcast a staccato message from Merriman Smith, the legendary UPI
wire service correspondent covering the president’s trip:
THREE SHOTS VERE FIRED AT PRESIDENT
KENNEDY’S MOTORCADE IN DOWNTOWN DALLAS...
FLASH
FLASH
KENNEDY SERIOUSLY WOUNDED
PERHAPS SERIOUSLY
PERHAPS FATALLY BY ASSASSINS BULLET.
The three years that Jacqueline Kennedy later called Camelot came
to a terrible, shocking end that sent the country into a spiral of grief and
bewilderment, a national mourning at once majestic and haunting in its
reminder of our crushing loss.
FOREWORD
I was in an Omaha newsroom,
having finished my chores as
morning news editor for an NBC
affiliate. I was twenty-three, mar-
ried just a year, and hoping one
day to become a Washington
reporter. Kennedy was my kind
of president: young, stylish, witty,
with a glamorous wife and celeb-
rity friends who included both
astronauts and movie stars. Like
many of my generation, Í saw him
as a welcome change from the
grandfatherly figures of Eisen-
hower and Truman. He sailed
and played touch football, shunned fedoras and double-breasted suits.
When I read those first alarming bulletins, running to get them on
the air, I was roiled by conflicting emotions: My God, who would do this?
Shooting a president? In America? As I raced out to the nearby headquar-
ters of the Strategic Air Command, a Cold War nerve center, to check
its status, extra heavy security turned me away at the gate. I remember
thinking, What now? This is going to be a different country. The innocence of
my ’50s, Midwest upbringing shattered.
The Midwestern governors were meeting in Omaha, and | inter-
viewed the best known of
them, George Romney of
As I raced out to the nearby Michigan, a man with his
headquarters of the Strate- own presidential aspira-
Air C d.aCold tions, but that day he was
BECAR ommana, a U0 another grieving citizen. |
War nerve center, to check its later described to his son
Mitt how his father com-
forted my cameraman. In
turned me away at the gate. Nebraska, a conservative
state, there were other issues
status, extra heavy security
VI
FoREWORD
to deal with, notably: Would the
University of Nebraska play its
biggest rival, the University of
Oklahoma, in Lincoln the follow-
ing day? The game went on, as did
others across the country, and as a
reporter in the stadium, I remem-
ber that the cheering Nebraska
fans offered a raucous contrast to
the solemnity everywhere else.
We were suddenly a differ-
ent people, and, as you will read
in the following pages, for those
who lived through the news from
Dallas and the mourning that
followed, we were bound first
by the common experience of sharing our grief and the rituals of trans-
ferring power as it all played out on network television. Half a century
later, future presidents, astronauts, students, doctors who received the
president’s shattered body, journalists, historians, and even Russian spies
remember exactly where they were and what they thought when they
heard the news. Don't we all?
Marie Tippit, wife of the Dallas cop murdered by Lee Harvey
Oswald after the president was shot, treasures a painfully poignant let-
ter she received from Jackie Kennedy the following week. John Brewer’s
life is still measured by that day when he saw Oswald duck into a movie
theater and followed him inside. Buell Frazier’s life became a living hell
when word got around that he drove Oswald to work that day, a favor
that has shadowed him ever since. Andrew Young, the civil rights leader,
breaks down even now remembering how poor country church parish-
ioners wailed in their grief when they heard the news. Mort Sahl, the
president’s friend and joke writer, will never believe it was just Oswald.
Pentagon Counsel Joe Califano helped Bobby Kennedy select the presi-
dent’s gravesite and then went to work for the new president, who, Joe
says, believed Castro somehow played a part.
VII
FoREWORD
Historians and JFK admirers reveal what we didn't know about the
secret side of his personal life, about his legacy and, always, the what-ifs.
What if he had lived? Would he have expanded the Vietnam War? Could
he have gotten the Civil Rights Bill through Congress, or did it take
his death and his successor, Lyndon Johnson, to accomplish that historic
achievement? Did the very manner of his death and its subsequent inves-
tigation change us?
The intersection of those key questions—Where were you? How did
it impact your life and America’s psyche? What if?—offers a meeting
place for Americans to ponder half a century after those shots were fired
into a presidential limousine on a Dallas street. They form a fixed part of
history and myth, a provocative examination of who we were then and
what we became after.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, wealthy young aristocrat, war hero, and
ladies’ man, remains ageless in our memories and in the official and infor-
mal photographs from his presidency. He was already preparing to run
for a second term and beginning to muse on what he might do after eight
years in the White House. We'll never know, of course, but his life and
then his sudden, violent death remain an indelible part of our history.
We invite you to join the conversation that provoked this project.
Where were your
—Tom Brokaw
Vill
Q v
6 g
E a
ooa
xO
Dan Rather
In November 1963 Dan Rather—now a preeminent TV newsman and
winner of numerous Peabody and Emmy awards—was the thirty-two-
year-old CBS bureau chief in New Orleans. The network had sent the
native Texan to Dallas to coordinate its coverage of JFK’s campaign
fundraising swing through the state. As fate had it, Rather found himself
at a film drop-off site just steps from the infamous grassy knoll when
the shots rang out.
was just past the railroad overpass. You have the School Book Deposi-
tory here, and the street runs under a railroad overpass, and I was just
past that overpass. I was there to take a film drop. Remember: It wasn’t
videotape at the time. We were shooting—everybody was shooting—in
film by and large. It was to be a place where the White House film crew
was to throw off some film, and we had these positions all along the
motorcade route. It was the last place. The official motorcade through the
city was to end when it went under the underpass. ‘Then they were going
out to Trade Mart, where the president was going to speak. So I had
positioned myself there to take the last throw of film off the photo truck,
which was part of the motorcade, and take it back and have it processed
and feed it to New York. I didn't hear a shot. I had no idea that a shot or
shots had been fired. I was frankly sort of relaxed because it was a routine
day. When I thought I saw the motorcade flash by, I wasn’t even sure. I
could hear the crowd, but I said to myself, Was that the presidents limou-
sine? Was that the first lady I saw in that car or not? My first impression—
we talk about nanoseconds here—was Maybe not, because the rest of the
motorcade didn’t come behind it. But then very quickly after that, when
the rest of the motorcade didn’t come, I said, “Well, something must have
WHERE WERE You?
happened, because the rest of the motorcade isnt coming through here,
and was that the president’s limousine or not? Was that the first lady?”
I thought they were going to the Trade Mart. They seemed to me
to take another turn. Now I was supposed to be in charge of our cover-
age—the whole coverage. I wasn’t the lead correspondent. Our White
House correspondent, and a great one, the late Bob Pierpoint, was to
beat his piece that day. I was there to facilitate the coverage, so I was out
of position. I said to myself, Wow, if anything has happened, I've got to get
back to KRLD, which was our local station that we were using as a feed
point; it was only about four blocks away. I’m out of position here, so I
took off. There’s a rise—what is now the infamous grassy knoll. As soon
as I topped that, a scene of almost unbelievable chaos, even panic: There
were men falling on top of their children and wives, people screaming.
At that second I said, “Not only has something happened, but something
really big has happened.” What was in my head was, I’m way out of position
here. I shouldn’t have been over there. So I took off, just hightailed it. Yes,
you can make a case that I should have stopped and got my notebook out.
Dan RaTHER
I should have stayed there. But
my job, remember, was to facili- I got back and practically
tate our coverage and be the key
person in getting the material to blew the hinges off the
New York. door getting into the
I ran back to the station. I
had no idea that shots had been station.
mired. I ad noes het he ee e e
ident was hurt in any way at that time. All I knew was something had
happened, something really big and important, and, well, if not impor-
tant, certainly the crowd thought there was.
So I got back and practically blew the hinges off the door getting into
the station. This is KRLD, where we were doing our feed point. I just said,
“Get the police radios up. Something has happened.” Tumultuous things
happened immediately, and Merriman Smith, the late UPI reporter, had
the now-famous bulletin from Dallas.
I knew Parkland Hospital, where they took him, and so I immedi-
ately got on the telephone, knowing that if he had been taken there, it
wouldn't be long until all the lines would be busy. I got through to Park-
land Hospital, and a switchboard operator—which tells you how long
ago this was—put me through first to a doctor, then to a priest. I said,
“Has the president been shot?” They said, “Yes, the president’s shot, and
the president’s dead.”
“The president’s dead” —what a hammer to the heart and the psyche.
All that was known, and it wasn't widely known immediately, was
that shots had been fired at the president and he had been taken to Park-
land Hospital. CBS News had a team operation. We concluded he was
dead before the official announcement. On radio we made the announce-
ment that the president was dead. The decision was made by the television
part of the CBS News operation, “We're just going to wait for the official
announcement.” The official announcement came shortly after 1:00 p.m.
The CBS people there, including me, with Eddie Barker's operation,
found the Zapruder film by making a lot of telephone calls. When some-
thing happens—never mind something this big—the first thing you look
for are pictures. Remember, this is not a time when everybody has a camera,
WHERE WERE You?
phone or otherwise. Phone cameras didn't even exist then. Not everybody
has a motion picture camera. But what we wanted to do, as every other jour-
nalist enterprise wanted to do, was find the pictures. The president's been
shot. The president of the United States is dead in front of thousands of
people. There have to be pictures. Motion pictures—what we called in the
film days pictures that wiggle, motion-picture pictures—would be prefer-
able, but any kind of photographs. So we started making phone calls.
When I say we, probably twelve or fifteen people started asking ques-
tions, making phone calls. Within hours, maybe less than that, a police-
man told somebody on the KRLD staff, “There was a guy with a movie
camera.”
“Was he an official? Was he government?”
“No, no. I think he was just a citizen.”
Keep in mind there weren't that many movie cameras around. Who
might he be? Somebody thought he might recognize him, and we tracked
down phone numbers. Finally, almost miraculously, we got Mr. Zapruder
on the phone. He confirmed that, yes, he had filmed the whole thing. Of
course the film needed to be developed. We helped make the contact with
Kodak to process it overnight. In those days, if you had a home movie
camera, it’d take three days, maybe a week, to get it processed. But under
these circumstances, you got it processed overnight.
By the next morning, Mr. Zapruder quite wisely had a lawyer. He
realized what he had was going to be quite valuable. We had told him,
“We'd like to get the film.” He said, “I don't quite know how that works.”
We wound up in Mr. Zapruder’s lawyer’s office. I thought that CBS
News had the only access to Mr. Zapruder, but when I got to the lawyer's
office, which was in downtown
Dallas, my heart sank because
3 Dick Stolley—a great reporter
Ap oliceman told some- at Life magazine at that time
body on the KRLD staff, ` and later the creator of People
“ e magazine—was there. Stolley,
There was aA
S with a whom I knew, and knew to be a
© 39
movie camera. tough reporter, was working for
a ty, theme ie ep poe
Dan RaTHER
hated to see him there. But the lawyer said, “Here’s the situation: We’re
going to show you this film. We're going to show you it one time. Then,
in effect, we'll put it up for bids.”
It wasnt a screening room. They just put it up on the wall. They
showed it one time. I'll never forget being in that room. My head was
back, my eyes were wide, my mouth was agape because, as everyone now
knows, it was all laid out there.
‘The only thing in my mind was: This is news. Even I, dumb as a fence-
post about a lot of things, knew this was news. I went out of the room—
well, flew out of the room. I said to the lawyer: “I’m going to report this on
television, what I’ve seen. I'll be back. Do I have your promise that noth-
ing will happen before I get back?” Now he has another version of this,
I think, but I thought I had a promise. Our studio was a short distance
away. I ran all the way over, sat down and, from memory, with no notes,
recounted what I had seen. They asked me to redo it once because, frankly,
they hadn't liked how I described what I'd seen of Mrs. Kennedy trying
to get out of the car—and rightly so. They knew this was a very sensitive
point, so they asked me to redo it.
‘Then I went running back over to the lawyer’s office. When I got
there, they asked, “What do you think it’s worth?” I said, “This is way
beyond my pay grade. I have no idea.” So I went back to CBS. They said,
“Start with ten thousand dollars, and we'll give you maybe thirty-five
thousand/fifty thousand dollars top.” It was a quick conversation with
news people, not with the business people. I went back to the lawyer’s
office, and Dick Stolley was smiling like a deacon with four aces.
I said to the lawyer, “I want to talk about maybe making—”
“It’s been sold,” he said. “Life magazine has bought it.” Naturally I
wasnt happy about that and said, “How could you do this? That was sup-
posed to be—”
“They made a preemptive bid,” he said.
Life magazine didn't allow the film to be seen by the public. The pub-
lic didn't see the film for, I think, something like twelve years. But even
during that period, when Id seen it only the one time, it played—and
still plays to a degree, like a looped videotape—in the back of my head.
Sometimes in off moments, when I’m thinking about something else, it'll
Wuere WERE You?
just play. Fair to say, as I get
older and my steps .grow
slower, I think of it less in
recent years. But when we
have a year like the anni-
versary year, that videotape
plays from time to time,
you bet.
Dallas is seen, for bet-
ter and for worse, in the
state as a whole—this was
certainly true in my youth
and I think to a degree is
true now—as the only place
in Texas that looked north
and east for approval. Most
Texans say, “Frankly I don’t give a damn what you think. I’m a Texan,” and
such things as “Listen, if it’s true, it ain't lyin’, you know.” But the rest of
the state’s always said, “We don't care what people in the North think.”
But Dallas, partly because it was a commercial center, a banking center,
was the only place in the state that looked northeast for approval. To say
that Dallas was psychologically devastated wouldnt be too strong a word.
There were people who said, “Texas killed Kennedy,” or “Dallas killed
Kennedy.” The city was in a state of shock like the rest of the country,
but their shock was exacerbated by the sense of shame—I wouldn't say
guilt—about what had happened there. It took some years to overcome
that. There was some pride that Lyndon Johnson had become president,
but the Dallas of 1963 is light years away from the Dallas of today.
Lyndon Johnson was not an overwhelmingly popular person when
he was a senator or vice president, but it was a sense of “OK, the country
has to go through this period. Good that a Texan's in charge.” With that
was a sense of “We Texans hate the idea that this happened here. We hate
the idea that it happened at all.” There were other folds underneath this.
Texas was and is a gun culture, and the whole business of “How in the
world could a president of the United States be assassinated and then the
Dan RaTHER
assassin be assassinated. ... What kind of state do you have down there?
What kind of city do you have down there?” It took a while, particularly
for Dallas, to outgrow that.
It changed me. I think the experience changed every American. But
perhaps because I was there, it changed me in several senses. First of all, it
made me a more skeptical reporter. You never want to descend into cyni-
cism. But skepticism in a reporter—a fairly strong sense of skepticism—is
important. So it developed that in me. It also developed in me a stronger
sense of life, every day for what there is, because life is fragile. What you
most expect frequently doesn’t happen. What you least expect too often
happens. It also gave me a renewed respect for those in public service.
You can say, as some people were fond of saying when he was alive, “John
Kennedy was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. His father has all
the money in the world. He has all the money in the world. He had the
benefit of education, one thing, another.” But he gave himself to public
service and believed deeply in it, and so many people around him did
too—not just White House staff people, the Secret Service people. It gave
me a renewed sense of patriotism and a renewed sense of love of country,
a new respect for public service, those people who dedicate their lives to
public service. It also brought me closer to my family.
Robert Grossman
Now the chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Methodist Hospi-
tal in Houston, Texas, in 1963 Robert Grossman was a thirty-year-old
neurosurgery resident at Parkland Hospital in Dallas when President
Kennedy was brought there immediately after being shot.
| es sitting in my laboratory at South Western Medical School, talking
with Kemp Clark. Kemp and I were the two neurosurgeons at Park-
land. Kemp was the chairman. He was thirty-eight; I was thirty. ‘That
was my first job after finishing my training in neurosurgery. I'd been at
Parkland for about five months at that time. I was on the faculty; I had
finished my training. We were talking about the president’s visit and that
it was controversial. There was some feeling that the president was not
welcomed by certain groups in the community; I think that was a very
small aspect of the community. There were huge crowds greeting him,
very enthusiastic, and I think he and Jackie were actually much-loved fig-
ures. Kemp and I were sitting and talking about the trip. The phone rang,
and someone said to me, “Come to the emergency room. President’s been
shot.” I told Kemp. We thought it was a prank. Then we looked at each
other and said, “We had better go and see.”
We started walking to the elevator and took the elevator down. The
medical school building was across the parking lot from the hospital.
When we got downstairs, we could see limos, police cars, and an ambu-
lance at the entrance to the emergency room, so we started running. We
ran into the entrance to Parkland, down the hall to Trauma Room One.
We had no idea of how serious it was at the time.
There was the president of the United States lying motionless, sur-
rounded by physicians—it was a tremendous emotional shock. It was very
IO
ROBERT GROSSMAN
clearly the president. He was a
very striking, very handsome
figure, even in that extreme
situation. [here was no sense of
panic or of fear in the room. I
think Parkland physicians were
used to taking care of very seri-
ous injuries, and I think every-
one was doing their job, was
very contained. It was really
quite businesslike.
The president had been
seen first by Jim Carrico and
Malcolm Perry. Jim was chief
resident. Malcolm was on the
faculty; he was a vascular sur-
el Je geon. ‘They had done an intu-
bation ia a tracheotomy because they had seen a wound in his throat.
They thought at the time that it was an entrance wound. They started
intravenous fluids. It was clear that he had a severe head wound. There
was a great deal of bleeding from his head, but at that point no one had
examined his head carefully.
Kemp and I went to the head of the gurney and stood PEN the
president. The assistant, if you have a right-handed surgeon, stands at
the right hand of the surgeon. So Kemp was on the left, I was on the
right, and we both picked his head up to examine the wound. The scalp
had been shattered, and the skull had been shattered and lifted up like a
plate of bone. You could see that the president’s brain tissue—which was
badly disrupted in an area about
the size of your hand, over
what’s called the parietal boss— : :
had been blown = where this We both p icked his head
was an exit wound. Lifting his up to examine the wound.
head up, I could see an entrance
wound with brain extruding
II
WHERE WERE YOU?
from it. It was immediately
clear to me that he had been
shot from behind, the bul-
in one corner of the room. let coming out through the
parietal area and blasting the
Mrs. Kennedy was standing
tissue outward.
It was clear that this was a fatal injury, and what was going through
my mind was: How long would he live? Would he be in a coma for days,
even weeks? People can be kept alive on respirators with life support. I
was wondering whether he would be in that situation, with the whole
country held in suspense, the whole world around us watching.
Everyone at Parkland, from the highest to the most unfortunate, is
treated the same way. I don’t think it would’ve made any difference if it
was somebody else. There was a tremendous effort to see if his heart could
be started. An EKG was taken. There was no organized electrical activity
in his heart, so I think people’s attention was really focused on whether he
could be resuscitated. But after cardiac massage and artificial respiration,
it was clear that his heart couldn't be started. Dr. Clark Kemp, who was
the most senior person in attendance, said we should stop resuscitation
efforts.
Mrs. Kennedy was standing in one corner of the room. She had blood
and brain on her dress; she was wearing that iconic pink outfit. ] think
there were some tears on her face. But she wasn't out of control in any way.
She was standing there quietly. The Secret Service agents must have been
in the room, but they didn’t interfere or interrupt the medical care.
Dr. Clark made the call, I think, because the clear cause of death was
the head wound. I think it devolved upon him to make that judgment.
_ Texas law was that a person who has been shot or murdered should
have an autopsy in the county in which the murder occurred. Earl Rose,
who was the coroner, stood in front of the Secret Service as they were
wheeling the body out and tried to stop them. But the Secret Service
wouldn't have any of that. They pushed him out of the way and continued
to take the president back to Washington.
It’s difficult to say whether an official autopsy would have made a dif-
ference in terms of findings. The autopsy records aren't as detailed as one
I2
ROBERT GROSSMAN
would wish, and the physicians in Bethesda who did the autopsy were
under a great deal of time pressure to complete it. The X-rays that were
taken were not as complete, not as thorough as could’ve been done. The
drawings that were made were rather crude. But whether it would’ve been
done better in Dallas, no one can say.
Seeing the president dying in front of you—the feeling is one of awe.
Everyone was concerned. There wasn’t much discussion in the room obvi-
ously. Everyone was concentrating on the medical aspect. But I think
everyone was concerned: What does this mean for the country? Was this the
start of World War III? I think that was the first thought everyone must’ve
had. Was this a deliberate attack? What better way to destabilize the
country than to kill the president. Was this a deliberate attempt by Rus-
sia? We were at the height of the Cold War. We'd just had the Cuban
Missile Crisis. Was it the Cubans? Was it the Russians? We had fought
the Chinese and North Koreans. Was China or North Korea behind this?
Was it a right-wing hate group, a left-wing group? All those thoughts
were going through our minds.
I got home later that afternoon—I dont remember the exact time. I
told Ellen, my wife, about what had happened. We had two young daugh-
ters: Amy, who was about three, and Kate, who was one. They were too
young to remember of course. But I told Ellen and waited to go in the
next day. As you know, Oswald was captured and then shot, and I was
asked by the surgical service to examine him. He was in deep shock. ‘The
question was whether the bullet had penetrated his spine or the shock
was simply due to abdominal bleeding. I examined him. As best as I could
determine, the bullet had not entered his spine.
I don't think Oswald could have been saved, even if hed gotten better
treatment en route to the hospital. He had lost a great deal of blood and,
even if re-infused, if the person has been in shock too long, the nervous
system will not recover. I don't think
he would’ve recovered.
Later that Sunday, we were very T don’t think Oswald
much focused on what the president’s
death meant for the country rather could have been saved.
than on any personal change or effect
WHERE WERE You?
on us. It made me proud
to be an American -because
unlike in many countries in
the world, where an assassi-
nation might result in a mil-
itary takeover, nothing like
that happened. Everything
was orderly. Our Constitu-
tion was respected. Everyone
knew what he or she should
do and followed through
properly.
There are some unan-
swered questions, and I
think that probably the
most controversial aspect of the Warren Commission report is the ques-
tion of the order of the shots: whether there was one shot that hit both
the president and Governor Connally or whether there were separate
shots. I think no one can give a definitive answer to that.
At the time this was thought to be an entry wound, but actually it was
an exit wound. We should’ve undressed the president and examined his
entire body, but we didn’t do that out of respect for him. There would be
an autopsy in Washington, and the thought was that they would do what-
ever was necessary. I think if we had examined him, we would’ve seen the
entry wound, which was in his upper back.
That bullet had come out through his throat, so he clearly was shot
twice. I guess the question is whether there was a separate shot that hit
Connally. But I think that’s the most controversial aspect. Out of respect
for the president, nobody wanted to undress him and examine him com-
pletely. I think everyone was in such a state of shock that the notes made
by the physicians weren't detailed. Nowadays, with everyone having a
smart phone with a camera, we would’ve photographed the body. We
would’ve photographed the wounds.
I always drew the pathology of the operations that I did—I learned
that from my residency chairman, Jay Lawrence Poole, at Columbia. He
14
ROBERT GROSSMAN
was a wonderful medical artist, and he would draw the anatomy of the
tumors, the aneurysm we operated on. I should’ve made a drawing of
what I saw, but it just never crossed my mind. I suppose I was in shock
from the events. I don't think there ever has been a protocol for reporting
what you have seen, except to dictate it. Even the dictated notes were not
very detailed, because it was really like being in the center of a hurricane
and more wondering about the implications of what had happened.
] went back into the hospital the next day and made rounds. I don't
remember really watching television that much afterward. The atmo-
sphere in the hospital was actually fairly calm; I think people were keep-
ing their concerns to themselves. There wasn't an atmosphere of panic or
chaos in any way. It was very professional.
I can still visualize picking the president’s head up. He had very thick
hair, but even with that you could see the blasted out area of his skull and
his brain. It seems like yesterday.
I have a photograph of President Kennedy that has never been pub-
lished. It was taken by a friend when Kennedy came to talk at Rice Uni-
versity a year before, when he talked about putting a man on the moon.
My friend was the photographer for the Rice Thresher, the university
newspaper, and took a wonderful photograph of the president in the car,
which I have at home. That’s the way I’ll remember him, not as he was on
the gurney but as a vital human being. Robert Dalleck's book An Unfin-
ished Life—that is the sad part, because we dont know what he might
have accomplished had he lived. He really did have an unfinished life.
| Robert Caro
In 1963 Lyndon Baines Johnson biographer Robert Caro was a twenty-
eight-year-old reporter for Newsday. In 1974 he wrote The Power Bro-
ker, a biography of New York City urban planner Robert Moses, which
the Modern Library chose as one of the hundred greatest nonfiction
books of the twentieth century. To date he has written four of five
planned volumes of The Years of Lyndon Johnson (1982, 1990, 2002,
2012), a landmark biography of the former president. He has won two
Pulitzer Prizes and numerous other literary awards.
W he comes to Congress in 1947—the summer after the first
session—he has been sick all his life with the same symptoms:
constant nausea, inability to gain weight. He’s so skinny that you can see
the ribs, count the ribs on him. He has a constant pain in his stomach,
which he defines as “like it’s a hard knot inside me,” and he has this yel-
lowish tint. He’s been diagnosed with everything, including leukemia and
hepatitis. None of the diagnoses was correct, so none of the treatment
was correct. In 1947, after his first year in Congress, he goes to England
to visit his sister and falls terribly ill. And for the first time they have the
right diagnosis: Addison’s disease.
- In 1947 Addison’s disease is often fatal, and the physician who treats
him in London tells Pamela Churchill, whose house he was staying at,
“You know that young friend of yours from America? He hasn't got a year
to live.” He’s brought back to America in the sick bay of the Queen Eliza-
beth on a stretcher. He’s so sick that when he gets to New York, a priest
comes on board to administer the last rites. He’s flown into Boston, where
he does gradually recover. In 1949 cortisone is starting to be used, and it’s
a miracle drug to treat Addison's disease, which really had no cure before.
16
ROBERT Caro
Kennedy starts to change,
to fill out. His face starts to
fill out. But just about that
time, his back, which has
always been terribly bad,
becomes so bad that he’s
walking on crutches. When
he campaigns for the first
time for the Senate against
Henry Cabot Lodge, he’s
often on crutches. He’s
ashamed of them. He tries
to hide them. When he’s in
the Senate, there’s a committee hearing; he tries to get there a little early
to put the crutches under the table so nobody will see them. Sometimes
there’s no room under the table, so you see the crutches standing against
the wall behind him.
Doctors don't want to operate because Addison’s disease has such ter-
rible effects on the immune system. He decides to have the operation, and
the surgeons at the Lahey Clinic in Boston refuse to operate because it’s
too risky. His father says to him, “Don't have the operation. Roosevelt was
on crutches. You can still have a full life.” Jack Kennedy says to his mother,
“I would rather die in the operation than live the rest of my life hobbling
around on crutches with pain all the time.”
In’54 he has an operation on his back despite these terrible risks. They
only give him a 50/50 chance of surviving the operation. The operation
doesn't work, and four months later, in February’55, he has a second oper-
ation. [he incision doesn't close. It’s eight inches long, so he basically has a
hole in his back. At that time he goes to see a doctor named Janet Travell.
I was a reporter on Newsday, and for a brief time I covered Bobby
Kennedy’s run against Kenneth Keating in ’64. Bobby always used to
say about Dr. Travell, “Without her, my brother would never have been
president.” She was Kennedy’s White House physician, and then she was
Johnson’s White House physician. She told me this story, which she later
recounted in her own memoir:
i
WHERE WERE You?
Jack Kennedy doesn’t want anyone to know he was sick, so when he
comes back from the second operation, he first goes down to Palm Beach
to get a tan. He comes back. He leaves the crutches on the plane, the pho-
tographers take pictures of him walking off the plane with this big grin.
The Herald Tribune writes, “Tanned and fit, Jack Kennedy comes back to
the Senate.” Dr. Travell has read all this and isn’t quite sure why he’s com-
ing to see her. Her window faces the steps; she sees Jack Kennedy get out
of his taxicab, and she sees this crippled man. He’s on crutches. It’s hard for
him even to get down the three steps. When he’s talking to her, she says,
he cant turn. He can’t turn his head to talk to her unless he turns his entire
body. When she asks him to describe his medical history, the symptoms,
he does it in such a discouraged, tired voice, as if he has told this story too
many times before. But she starts to do the things that need to be done:
She treats him with injections, and she puts him in a rocking chair so that
the muscles of his back are constantly in motion. This treatment is so out-
side normal medical procedures. She injects procaine and Novocain into
the back spasm—and almost immediately starts to get him better.
But she sees his ambition. As soon as her treatments start to work, he
starts to run for president, crisscrossing the country, seeing political lead-
ers in all the states. Then his father calls Dr. Travell and says, “You know,
he’s in terrible pain still. Can you come down to Palm Beach?” She comes
down to Palm Beach and sees laid out on a table a big map of the United
States, all the places he’s going to travel to, and she sees there are no days
off, no time for rest, and he’s in pain. She says, “You must take time off for
rest,” and he basically tells her, “I won't take the time off.” His back gradu-
ally starts to get better. He stays in the rocking chair. He continues to be
treated by her, and he crisscrosses the United States over and over again,
learning the new forces in politics.
Johnson said for the record, “What was Jack Kennedy? Jack Kennedy
was a sickly man, malaria ridden.” (He thought Kennedy had malaria.)
“Yellow in cast,” he said, “sickly, weak, not a man’s man.” That was Lyndon
Johnson's estimation of Jack Kennedy. It couldn't have been more wrong,
but he was judging Kennedy on the fact that he didnt really work or do
very much in Congress or the Senate. That’s how Johnson looked at peo-
ple. Everybody had the same view of Kennedy. Speaker of the House Sam
18
RoBERT CARO
Rayburn said of Kennedy, “A nice boy, but he doesn’t like the grunt work.
He doesn't like to really work at congressional work.” No one understood
that the real reason for this wasn't a lack of willingness to work, wasn’t
a lack of ambition. It was this terrible illness, and later his back, that
drained his energy.
In 1958 Lyndon Johnson is going to be the next Democratic nomi-
nee. He is the mighty Senate majority leader; he runs the Senate. Some-
one wrote about him, “He stands there with his arm upraised, directing
the votes to go faster and slower. He makes a gesture. Two more men run
out of the cloakroom. He makes another gesture, another man comes out.
My God, running the world. Power enveloped him.”
So Johnson thinks he’s going be the presidential nominee. In the
beginning of 1958, he is going to be the presidential nominee. But Jack
Kennedy is going around the country, and he’s learning that there’s a new
force in politics. Johnson thinks it’s the senators, the old bulls, who are
running things back in their states. But there’s a new generation of politi-
cians, men who were veterans of the Second World War, like Jack Kennedy.
Now they're rising up. They identify with Kennedy. A new organization
is starting up, and Johnson will not campaign. He thinks Kennedy will
never get the required 761 votes on the first ballot—or any ballot. ‘There’s
no way Kennedy is going to get a majority. If Kennedy doesn't get that
majority, it’s going to go into the back room. What does the back room
mean? They're old-time politicians, and Johnson says, “They talk my lan-
guage. [hey don't talk Jack Kennedy’s language. If I can get it into the
back rooms, I will be the nominee.” He doesn't realize what’s happening.
Jack Kennedy is taking the nomination away from him.
Kennedy had a great understanding of the world. He had traveled.
He had been in England. He wrote Why England Slept, which analyzed
what led up to the Second World War. He was a reader of history. Dur-
ing the Cuban Missile Crisis, he kept referring to a book, Barbara Tuch-
man’s The Guns of August, about how the First World War came about
because of miscalculations and follies. People rushed to do things, made
the wrong decision. Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis he was saying,
“Let’s take time. Let’s not take this step because it’ll lead to other steps.”
He kept pulling back the hawks, standing in their way. He said, “If we
WHERE WERE You?
can just give peace another day, maybe I can negotiate with Khrushchev.
Maybe he’ll come around.”
It’s amazing. The newspapers and magazines have lists of vice presidents,
and Lyndon Johnson's name is on none of them. He has all this power as
a majority leader. Why would he give up that power to be vice president,
which is a powerless post? No one thinks there’s a chance of that, and
Kennedy hasn't even hinted at it. The labor leaders and liberal leaders
are scared that Lyndon Johnson might become the vice presidential can-
didate. Kenny O'Donnell says he had given assurances, with Kennedy’s
approval, to labor and liberal leaders that it wouldn't be Lyndon Johnson.
Kennedy is nominated one night. The next morning at eight o'clock, the
telephone rings in Lyndon Johnson's bedroom where he’s sleeping with
Ladybird. It’s Jack Kennedy.
He says, “I want to come down and speak to you.” They make an
appointment for ten oclock, and someone says to Johnson, “What did
he call about?” Johnson says, “He’s going to offer me the vice presidency.”
At about the same time, Jack Kennedy is calling his brother Bobby. In
the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Kennedy has the corner suite on
the ninth floor; 9333 is the number. Johnson is two floors down: 7333.
Bobby Kennedy is in the middle, on the eighth floor. Jack Kennedy calls
Bobby early in the morning and says, “Count up all the votes we'd get if
I hold the big states in the North that I know I’m going to hold, and add
Texas.” Bobby Kennedy calls in two of his aides, Kenny O’Donnell and
Pierre Salinger, and tells them
to count up those votes.
“Count up all the votes Salinger says, “You're not
3 3 ; thinking of nominating Lyn-
wed get if I h old the big don Johnson, are you? Youre
states in the North that I = not going to do that?” And
know I'm going to hold, Debye nage
A That is startling and also
and add Texas. brilliant. Jack Kennedy always
ces S nerno
20
ROBERT CARO
one else had bothered to add that up. ‘They were all focused on the nomi-
nation. No one had bothered to add up what Jack Kennedy was going
to win once he got the nomination. Was he going be president of the
United States or just a defeated nominee for president? He was going
to have a tough race against Richard Nixon. Had Jack Kennedy been
thinking about this all along? We will never know. But as soon as he’s
nominated, the very next morning he’s offering the vice presidency to
Lyndon Johnson.
Suddenly Johnson finds he has no power at all. During the three years of
Kennedy’s presidency, Johnson spends very little time with the president.
Evelyn Lincoln, Kennedy’s secretary, put together from the presidential
log just how little time Johnson was alone with Kennedy, although he
wanted to be alone with him a lot. The first year, 1961, he’s alone with
Kennedy ten hours and nineteen minutes. Second year, I don’t remember
the number, but it’s less. The third year, in the whole year of 1963, the
vice president is alone with the president only an hour and some minutes.
Johnson is cut out of power completely.
Johnson was the great legislative magician. He passed bills no one
else could pass. In fact, in 1957 he passed the first civil rights bill that
had been passed since Reconstruction. But under the Kennedys he isn’t
allowed to participate in the legislative process at all. Part of it is simply
that they're afraid of Lyndon Johnson. They had seen him in his days of
power, how he was the most powerful man in Washington. They want to
keep Lyndon Johnson on a very short leash because if they let him off
the leash, who knows what he’s going to do? Second, Johnson is always
interested in publicity for himself. They’re afraid that if they let him run
the legislative program, it will become Lyndon Johnsons program and
not Jack Kennedy’s program. Third is simply the hatred between Johnson
and Robert Kennedy.
The Kennedys do everything during that presidency to humiliate
Johnson. He’s not allowed to have a plane to go to an event unless Robert
Kennedy personally approves it. Every speech, even a minor speech, has
to be approved by the Kennedys. They leave him with no power at all. Of
WHERE WERE You?
all the things that bothered Johnson, nothing bothered him as much as
not being allowed to ride on Air Force One with the president. At one
point Kennedy says to Evelyn Lincoln, “You don’t mean he’s asking to
ride on Air Force One again? I’ve told him that for reasons of security, the
vice president and the president should never travel on the same plane.”
~ —ie
When they get off the plane [in Dallas], the second car of the motorcade
is a Secret Service car. They call it the Queen Mary because it’s so heav-
ily armored and jammed with Secret Service men with their automatic
rifles hidden on the floor and four agents on the running boards. In the
first car are Kennedy and Connally, with his leonine head, and Nellie
Connally, the former sweetheart of the University of Texas. Then there’s
a seventy-five-foot gap. The Secret Service insists there be a seventy-five-
foot gap between the president’s cars. Then there’s the Johnson car, which
is an open convertible with Johnson sitting on the right in the backseat,
Ladybird in the center, and Senator Yarborough on the left; in the front
is Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood.
Suddenly there’s a crack—a sharp, cracking sound. People think it’s
a backfire from a motorcycle, or they think it’s a balloon popping. But
Connally told me, “I was a hunter. I knew the moment I heard it that it
was the crack of a hunting rifle.”
Rufus Youngblood in Johnson’s car hears the noise, doesn't know what
it is, but he says, “I suddenly saw not normal’—those are his words—
“not normal movements in the president’s car. The president seemed to
be tilting to the left.” At the same moment he sees in the Queen Mary,
the Secret Service car, an agent jump to his feet with a rifle in his hands;
he’s looking around, trying to find out what's going on. Then the other
shots crack out. It’s only eight seconds between the first and the last shot.
Everyone knows what they are now.
Youngblood whirls around in his seat. He grabs Johnson by the right
shoulder and says, “Get down. Get down.” Youngblood shouts in a voice
that Ladybird says she had never heard him use before. He pulls Johnson
to the floor and sort of falls over the back of the front seat and lies on top
of Johnson, shielding him from bullets. As they’re lying there, Youngblood |
22
ROBERT Caro
has a radio strapped to his shoulder. ‘The radio is basically in Johnson's
ear, and he hears the words, “He’s hit. He’s hit,” and he hears the words,
“Hospital, hospital.” Not only has the president been wounded but the
governor's been shot. Who knows if Johnson was the next target or not?
Youngblood tells him to keep down, and he realizes his best chance
of protection is to put his car as close to that Secret Service car in front of
him as he can. So he tells the driver, a Texas highway patrolman named
Hershel Jacks. A typical Texas patrolman—laconic, cool—Jacks puts the
car just a few feet from the bumper of the Secret Service car. The three
cars—Kennedy’s, the Secret Service’s, and Johnson’s—roar up a ramp onto
the expressway, roar down the expressway, and squeal off the expressway
and into the emergency bay at Parkland Hospital.
Youngblood says to Johnson, “When we get to that hospital, don’t
stop for anything. Don't look around. We're taking you to find you a secure
place.” So they yank him out of the car. His car is right next to Kennedy’s.
He never has a moment to look to the left to see what’s in Kennedy’s car.
What’s in Kennedy’s car is the president’s body. ‘They haven't taken it out
yet, with the blood pooling from his head on Jackie's lap as she’s sitting
there. But he doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know what’s happened to the
president. They run Johnson—four agents with the agent behind them
carrying a rifle in his hand—looking for a secure place.
The Secret Service agents sort of lift Johnson out of the car and run
him down one corridor, down another one, and finally they get to what
they call the medical section. They find a cubicle that’s been divided into
three sections. Johnson is put against a back wall. They close the blinds
on the windows. For forty-five
minutes, Johnson stands there.
They bring in a chair, and The radio is basically in
i sits beside him. But To bnson’ ear, and he hears
yndon Johnson is standing
there. Then Ken O’Donnell the words, “Hes hit. He's
suddenly walks through the hit.” and he hears the
’
door. Ladybird was to write in
her diary: “Seeing the stricken words, “Hospital, hospital. 4
face of Kenny O'Donnell, who i
a5
WHERE WERE You?
Another Kennedy aide, Mac Kilduff; runs into the
room and runs over to Johnson and says, “Mr. Pres-
ident.” It’s the first time he knows hes president.
loved him, we knew.” A moment later, another Kennedy aide, Mac Kilduff,
runs into the room and runs over to Johnson and says, “Mr. President.” It’s
the first time he knows he’s president. This is one of the pivotal moments
in American history.
e —
I was a reporter for Newsday, a Long Island newspaper. I was in the mid-
dle of Arizona. Actually I was in the middle of the Mojave Desert. I was
doing a series on elderly retirees who were trying to live on retirement
homesites in the middle of the Mojave Desert, and we found out they
were basically being gypped by their companies. The Senate had sent an
investigator out with me. I had found that the elderly women who were
trying to live there didn’t have water or anything and had to drive to get
water. We were trying to get the names and addresses of these women so
that the Senate could bring them to Washington. We were there all of
November 22. We had been staying in Las Vegas and driving down to the
Mojave Desert. You couldn't get reception on our car radio. [here was so
much static early in the day that we turned off the radio. In the evening
we were driving back to the main highway. I think it was Route 66. It
went up to Las Vegas. As we got to the intersection and turned on the
radio, the first words we heard were, “Doctors are operating on Governor
Connally at this moment,” something like that.
What is this about? and then there was static. All of a sudden we came
up to Route 66, and there was a big truck—as I remember, a big trailer
truck—with a driver sitting in the window. He was crying and said some-
thing like “Have you heard?” and told us the news. This was already eve-
ning or close to evening of that day, hours after the assassination. I didn't
hear about it until then.
24
ROBERT CARO
i —ai
Johnson is transformed. The Kennedys had almost broken his spirit; he
had changed in appearance from the mighty majority leader to this guy
with a hangdog look. Suddenly he’s back in charge. The moment he’s
addressed as Mr. President, he is giving orders. Ihe Secret Service runs
into him, and Youngblood says, “We have to get you back to Washington.
The place we can keep you secure is the White House.”
Remember, we're only thirteen months from the Cuban Missile Cri-
sis. Was Russia behind this? Was Cuba behind this? Who was behind
this?
They say, “We have to get you back to the White House.”
Johnson says, “No. I’m not leaving the hospital without Mrs. Kennedy.
”
They say, “Mrs. Kennedy won't leave the hospital without her hus-
band’s body.”
Johnson says decisively, “We will go back to Air Force One, and PH
wait there for her to come with the body.” He directs them: “Get cars.
Let’s go to the airport by a different route than the one they expect us to
go. No sirens in the car.” They speed to the airport, and Johnson literally
runs up the steps with the Secret Service onto Air Force One to wait for
Kennedy’s body.
Talk about scenes in American history. Johnson goes into President
Kennedy’s bedroom [on the plane], and he takes off his jacket. Accord-
ing to different accounts, he either lies down on the bed, sprawls on the
bed, or sits on it and calls Robert Kennedy. Robert Kennedy and Lyndon
Johnson hate each other. Hatred is not too strong a word to describe the
feeling between Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. For three years
Robert Kennedy has done everything he can to humiliate Johnson, and
in a moment, in the crack of a rifle shot, the tables are completely turned.
Now Johnson has the power. He calls Robert Kennedy and asks him,
“Should I be sworn in here in Dallas before I get back to Washington?”
and “What’s the wording of the oath?”
Robert Kennedy is having lunch that day with his wife, Ethel, and
Robert Morgenthau, the district attorney for the southern district in New
York, at History Hill, the Kennedy house. It’s this old white frame colo-
nial house in McLean, Virginia, with a long lawn that slopes down to the
25
Wuere WERE You?
swimming pool. The house i is being painted. Suddenly two things happen
at once. Morgenthau sees one of the painters clap a transistor radio to his
ear with a look of shock and horror on his face and start running down
the lawn toward the swimming pool as fast as he can. ‘The same moment,
the telephone rings on a table on the other side of the swimming pool.
Ethel Kennedy goes to answer it, and it’s J. Edgar Hoover. He has Robert
Kennedy come over to the phone and tells him that his brother has been
shot and perhaps killed.
A few minutes later, the phone rings again. It’s Lyndon Johnson,
whom Robert Kennedy hates, fifteen minutes or so after he learns his
brother is dead, asking him for the wording of the oath of office and the
exact procedure for taking over the presidency. Two people heard that
call. Kennedy’s deputy, Nicholas Katzenbach, is patched into it. He’s the
number-two man, the deputy attorney general of the United States.
I asked Katzenbach. He said, “Johnson could’ve asked any one of a
hundred officials for the wording of the oath. He could’ve asked me; we
worked together a lot. It’s appalling that Johnson called Robert Kennedy.
He shouldn't have done it.”
Marie Fehmer is Johnson's secretary. She is in John Kennedy’s bed-
room [on Air Force One] with Johnson, and she hears Johnson's end of
the call. Johnson says to her, “Get on an extension, and take down the
exact wording of the oath.”
I asked her, “What were the voices like on the phone?” She said, “Kat-
zenbach’s voice was like steel. Bobby Kennedy’s wasn't. I kept thinking,
You shouldn’t be doing this. But the call is made.”
Another thing happens that increases the tension. While this is all
going on, Jacqueline Kennedy is coming onboard with a heavy bronze coffin
containing her husband’s body. They put the coffin in the compartment next
to the president’s stateroom, and Jacqueline Kennedy wants to go into the
stateroom—basically her and the president’s bedroom. She opens the door,
and there’s Lyndon Johnson in his shirtsleeves. Depending on whose account
it was, he is either sprawled on the bed or sitting on it. But Marie Fehmer
says, “It was a horrible moment, and we rushed out of the stateroom.”
So you have this plane carrying two presidents, one alive and one
dead. It’s flying across the United States. In the rear compartment is the
26
ROBERT CARO
president’s coffin. Sitting next to it is Jacqueline Kennedy. Her skirt is
covered with blood. She has taken off the white gloves she was wearing.
They’re caked with blood.
The Kennedy loyalists—Godfrey McHugh, O’Brien, O’Donnell—are
standing with her sort of next to the president’s body. In the next room,
the president’s stateroom and office, Lyndon Johnson is giving orders.
The orders are taken up to the cockpit and radioed to Washington. In the
front of the plane is where all the press and the passengers sit. One of the
reporters was asked, “What was it like there?” He said, “You've heard of
strong men weeping. Well, we had it there that day.” Kennedy’s secretaries
are crying too.
At this point, no one knows if it’s a conspiracy. We are shortly going
to be reading headlines: “Oswald visited the Cuban embassy.” “Oswald
visited Soviet embassy in Mexico City.” No one knows, but the Cuban
Missile Crisis is very fresh in everybody’s mind. During the flight, which
is something like two hours and six minutes long, on every air base along
the route, fighter planes are actually on the runways. The pilots are in the
cockpits, strapped in; the engines are running. In the radar shacks at the
bases, men are huddled over the radar screens. “Is any blip approaching
Air Force One?”
Thats the atmosphere, and as the plane flies across the country,
church bells are starting to ring in a thousand towns and cities. Flags are
being lowered to half-mast as the body of Jack Kennedy is flown back to
Washington. It’s one of the pivotal moments in American history; it’s also
a moment that for sheer poignancy is almost unequaled in our history.
m, -—ie
Johnson evokes Kennedy’s memory. He says, “Let us continue.” He says,
“The first priority is to pass the bill the president fought for all this long
year, the Civil Rights Bill.”
At the time President Kennedy is killed, that Civil Rights Bill is going
nowhere. The Senate was always the great barrier to civil rights with its use
of the filibuster. But the bill’s not even in the Senate. It’s not even on the
House floor. The House Judiciary Committee has passed it, but they sent it
to the Rules Committee, which is presided over by Judge Howard W. Smith
al
WHERE WERE You?
of Virginia, the archest of seg-
regationists. He wont even tell
anybody when he will start
a hearing. At approximately
the same time as the Kennedy
motorcade is going through
Dallas, John McCormick, the
Speaker of the House, is ask-
ing Judge Smith, “What’s the
schedule? When are you going
to start hearings?” Smith is say-
ing, “I don’t know.”
The Washington Post inter-
views Smith and asks, “What
are your plans for the Civil Rights Bill?” He says, “No plans.” That bill is
not getting out of the Rules Committee; it’s completely stuck.
Three nights after Kennedy’s assassination, Johnson's going to give
his first speech to the joint houses of Congress. Johnsons not even in
the Oval Office yet; he’s still living at home. In the dining room, around
his kitchen table, his advisors are drafting the speech. Johnson comes in,
and they tell him, “Don’t emphasize civil rights. Dont make that a pri-
ority. You’re going to alienate the Southern Democrats. It’s a lost cause,
anyway. It’s a noble cause, but it’s a lost cause. Don't waste your prestige
immediately on it.” And Johnson says, “What the hell’s the presidency for,
then?” He makes civil rights a centerpiece of his speech. He puts it in the
context of Kennedy’s memory. “This is what he fought for. This is what he
wanted.” Sympathy for Kennedy is not the whole story, but it's a big part
of the story of why that Civil Rights Bill gets passed.
Jack Kennedy had this great gift for appealing to the better side, “the
better impulses in America’s nature.” He said, “Ask not what your country .. 4
He stirred everybody. l
One minute it was the Eisenhower era, where people were inter-
ested in materialism and making money. Then Jack Kennedy made these
speeches at the beginning of his presidency, and all of a sudden, everyone
wanted to go to Harvard Business School. The next minute, everyone
28
Rospert Caro
wanted to enroll in the Peace Corps or work for Bobby Kennedy’s Justice
Department. He appealed to America’s ideals, and he did so in words of
genius. Ihe words of his speeches are the words of a man who knew what
ideals America should be striving for and knew what words to put them
into. He’s unforgettable in that.
In foreign policy, when you listen to the tapes of the Cuban Missile
Crisis, you hear over and over again moments you can hardly believe. The
Russians shoot down the airplane, and you hear the voices of George
Bundy, McNamara, and the others saying, “Now we promised we'd retali-
ate. We have to attack now. We have to bomb now.” Kennedy basically
says, ‘Gentlemen, let’s take a little break. Let’s be calm. Let’s come back
in a few minutes and talk about so-and-so.” Over and over again, he pulls
the hawks back from war. If he hadn't been president, would we have had
a nuclear war over the Cuban Missile Crisis?
In those respects, Kennedy was among our greatest presidents. You
also have to say that in domestic affairs, Kennedy was not effective. His
legislative program and the ideals he articulated for Medicare, for tax
reform, for civil rights werent going anywhere. Would they ever have
gone anywhere? If he had a second term, would they have gotten passed?
Perhaps, but there’s no sign of that. Both of his two big bills, the tax cut
bill and the Civil Rights Bill, were absolutely stalled in Congress.
When you look at the Kennedy assassination and Lyndon Johnson's
ascension to power, you say, “This is one of the pivotal moments of the
twentieth century.” It’s a watershed moment, and what do I mean by
“watershed”? I use it in the exact meaning of the term. A watershed is the
top of a mountain divide. On one side, the waters run one way; on the
other side, the waters run another way. On November 21, 1963, Amer-
ica was not the same country as it would be five years later—five years
after Jack Kennedy’s death—when Lyndon Johnson's presidency ended.
America changed. When you look at the whole landscape of America
in the twentieth century, John F. Kennedy’s presidency was a pivotal
moment when everything started to change. There are many reasons for
that. Part of it is the unique place Jack Kennedy holds in American politi-
cal history—because of the unique, unforgettable way he made America
remember what ideals it stood for.
NY
| Buell Frazier
Nineteen years old at the time, Buell Frazier worked at the Texas School
Book Depository and lived a few blocks from Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife,
Marina, in Irving. He considered Oswald a friend and drove him to work
on that fateful day.
he first day I met Lee Harvey Oswald was his first day at work. Mr.
Shelley, my supervisor, called me over to his office. I met Lee Oswald
outside of his office. He explained to me that Lee was a new hire and that
he wanted me to teach him how to fill orders there at the Texas School
Book Depository. I got to know Lee through working with him. I was
teaching him how to pull orders for different publishers. “Sometimes,” I
said, “you will have to read the line all the way across, because it will tell
you which textbook you want.”
We filled orders for five states out of there. We did New Mexico,
Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Arkansas; the public schools in Arkan-
sas might use one version of an algebra book, and maybe ‘Texas would use
another. Even though the covers looked the same, you had to know where
to look on the case or look inside the book to know which textbook to
send. Lee was very smart. He learned very quickly.
One time, when we were riding home, Lee asked me, “Do you follow
politics?” and I said, “No, not really.” I explained to him that I just didnt
have much faith in politicians. He didn’t tell me a lot about living in Rus-
sia. I did find out later, however, that he did live in Russia. But as far as
what type of work he did there or anything like that, it was never talked
about. I’ve since learned a lot about Lee, where he was, and things he did
before he met me. They’re just things I found out on my own through
reading or watching programs and so forth.
30
BUELL FRAZIER
At work, he didn't really fit
in. He tried, but he just didn't fit
in. He wasn't a slacker; he was a
good worker. I told him many
times after hed worked there for
several days, “Now, youre com-
ing along pretty good.” When
youre teaching somebody, you
feed something to them as fast as
they can absorb and retain it, and
Lee was remarkable in that. He
learned so quickly. He was very
dedicated in what he was doing.
He was a no-nonsense person
when he was working. a 7
Lee rode out to Irving,where Frazier in police custody (PHOTOGRAPH BY
he spent the weekends with his LAWRENCE SCHILLER)
wife at Miss Ruth Paine’s house.
He rode out every weekend except one.
e ——ie
November 22 was on a Friday. I was running a bit late that morning. I
don't know what I was doing, or I overslept a little bit. I got to the break-
fast table there in the den area at my sister’s home, where I was living, and
I was eating my breakfast.
My sister was over to my left at the kitchen sink, washing some dishes,
and she observed Lee carrying a package. He put the package in the back-
seat of my car, and then he came around and looked in the window. My
mother was there, and she looks up and says, “Who's that man looking in
the window?” I said, “Oh, that’s just Lee.”
Then I looked at my watch and said, “Oh, I’m running late,” so I went
to the door. Lee came to the carport, and I told him, “I’m just finishing up
breakfast; I'll be out in just a minute.” I went back, finished whatever I was
eating, and went and brushed my teeth. Then I went out to meet him. Lee
was outside there on the carport. We walked around and got in the car.
3I
WHERE WERE You?
As I was sitting down, I glanced over, looking at him, and I saw a
package in the backseat. I said, “What’s the package?” and he said, “You
remember I told you yesterday I was going home to get some curtain
rods?” I said, “Oh, okay.” That’s the last I thought about it. But much later,
I was asked a lot of questions about the package.
We got in the car and went on to work. The weather was overcast
and cloudy, and it was misting rain—real fine, little specks, much like a
straight pin, about that size, real small. While we were going to work, I
said, “I wish this rain would stop,” but we didn't talk a lot about a lot of
things that morning. The rain didn't seem to bother him. He just observed
what I said and said, “Okay,” or something like that. Then we got to work,
and a few minutes before work I sat there and charged the engine on my
car a little bit because I’d been having trouble sometimes with it starting.
While I was doing that, he got outside the car, and he got the package
and stood there for a minute. Then he decided to go on, and he walked
on ahead of me.
The area where I parked was down in the employees’ parking lot,
which was a good two hundred yards or more from the building where
we worked. We had to walk through a rail yard, where they switched and
put a lot of trains together. I was always fascinated with trains, even when
I was a little boy, so I'd watch the guys doing that. When Lee first started
out, he was probably fifty feet ahead of me, and as we walked along, he
got a little further and a little further ahead. When I was getting close to
the building, I noticed something: He was going up the steps on the dock,
and he went inside. I didn’t see him for some time, so what he did once he
got inside, I dont know.
I did see Lee that day. I could
I said, “Whats the pack- go to any floor we had. We had
seven floors and a basement. Ihe
age?” and he said, “You
first floor is where we put a lot of
remember I told you yes — _ the orders together and shipped
them out, by parcel post or
terday I was going home
i i freight. The basement had certain
fo get some curtain rods? publishers in it. A man by the
name of Jack Dougherty mainly
BUELL FRAZIER
worked the basement floor. Jack was a great guy, and sometimes I would
go down and help him. We got along wonderfully. It was nice and cool
down there, even in the summertime.
Jack didn't talk about President Kennedy coming by that day, and Lee
didn't say anything about it. But one of the workers there, a man by the
name of Junior Jarman, always bought a paper every morning before hed
come to work. He was looking at me and said, “Look at this! The presi-
dential parade’s going to come right by, out in front of the building.” He
said, “Do you think we'll get to go out there and watch that?”
I said, “I don't know.” I had a good rapport with the supervisor. So
when one of the workers looked at me, I said, “You all have been talking
about that for a couple hours. Why don't we just find out?”
They said, “Well, who’s going to go find out?”
I said, “I'll go find out,” so I went and asked Mr. Shelley, and he said,
“Let me check with Mr. Truly,” which was his boss, Mr. Roy Truly. He
checked, and then he went up and talked to a man by the name of Mr.
Casin, and they realized what a great opportunity that was. When you
stop and think about it, how many times do you get a chance to see the
president of the United States in a motorcade in your lifetime? Unless
youre in a business where you travel with him and do a filming, that
doesn't happen very often—or at least it didn't back in that time.
That’s something I think somebody should understand, because the
country back in 1963 was a lot different than it is today. We didn’t have
the technology we have today. There’s just a lot of things we didn’t have.
But we did fine.
When the presidential motorcade came by the Texas School Book
Depository, I was standing on the top step, on the first floor when you go
out the front of the building. I think there were seven steps there. I was
standing on the top step, but I was in the shadows. If you were out taking
a picture, you wouldn't have seen me because there were people down in
front of me. While we were out watching the parade, I didn’t see Lee.
I was just thinking to myself as they were coming down Houston
Street and getting ready to turn, and as they turned, I said to a lady, “Look
how realistic, how normal they look!” I said it because at that time we had
Life magazine, and the photography in the Life magazines were just really
33
WHERE WERE You?
something special. I remember seeing pictures of the Kennedys in differ-
ent places throughout the world, and I remarked on how beautiful Jackie
was and how real. I just couldn’t believe that I was that close to the first
lady and the president of the United States.
It was exciting. Here was a little country boy from a rural town in
East Texas, and I had a chance to come to the big city. I was excited about
that, and I was working. When I was a child, I thought everybody was my
friend. I know different now; that’s not true.
When the motorcade was turning the corner, they were being led by a
group of motorcycle policemen, and they were cutting the motorcycles on
and off, making them backfire. At the first shot, I thought it was someone
still doing the backfiring. But when the second and third shots came, I
realized it was no longer backfire, and the acoustics down in the Dealey
Plaza—how sounds bounce off one building onto another—has given the
impression to some people there were more shots than three.
A lady came running up the sidewalk to right where Elm goes
down to the underpass. She was coming right up by where we were
standing, at the steps, and she said, “Somebody has shot the presi-
dent.” It was real bad. People were running and hollering and falling
down. No one knew what was really going on. I just couldn't believe it,
because back in that time, and even today, that’s such a tragedy. I hope
it never happens in this country again. It was just hard to believe that
somebody would do that. I never thought of anybody doing that, in
the wildest imaginations that you could come up with. I never thought
anybody would do that.
I stayed right there in the step area. Billy and Mr. Shelley said they
were going down to see if they could learn more about what had just
happened. The whole time when we were watching the parade and every-
thing, I never thought about anybody except just being so close and being
able to witness that live. I look back on that now—that really meant a lot
to me, and I didn’t realize that at the time.
I stayed there outside, the steps there for a while with some people.
After some time, we decided to go back into the building. I'd gone back
in with some other people, and then, I know this may be strange, but 1
was hungry. I always kept my lunch down in the basement, where it was
34
BUELL FRAZIER
nice and cool, so I told somebody, “If Mr. Shelley or Mr. Truly’s looking
for me, I’m going down to the basement to eat my lunch.”
I'd gone down, and I was sitting there, eating my lunch, and I heard
a door open. I looked up, and there was a policeman; he asked me, “You
been down here very long?”
I said, “Not too long.”
He noticed I was eating my lunch and said, “Have you seen anybody
walking around down here?”
I said, “No, sir.” He asked me several questions. When he got through,
I said, “Anything else?”
He said, “No, you've told me everything I need to know.”
So I finished eating my lunch, and then I went back upstairs. Then we
had a roll call, and everybody was there but Lee. I remember them calling
out his name and Lee not responding. Lee hadn't taken his lunch that day.
I asked him that on the way to work. I noticed he didn’t have his lunch,
and I said, “You didn't bring your lunch today?” He said, “No, I’m going to
buy my lunch today.” We had a catering truck, which used to come at break
time around ten oclock, and some of the guys would buy their lunch off
the catering truck. There were also places that you could go and sit down,
like a lunch counter. I thought, Maybe Lee might've wandered off to one of
those places where you could get a sandwich and he just hadnt gotten back.
Mr. Truly announced that because of what had occurred, the School
Book Depository was closing early that day, and that we would resume
our normal work schedule on Monday morning. So I walked down to
my car.
Lee had told me the night before that he wouldn't be going home
with me on Friday. That morning, I checked: “Now, you told me that you
didn’t want to be going home with me this afternoon.”
He said, “That’s correct; I
wont be going with you.”
So I asked him, “You got Then we had a roll call,
ee ae __ and everybody was there
He said, “Yes,” something
about a driving test or something but Lee.
like that.
35
WHERE WERE YOU?
I used to listen to the radio. One of my favorite stations was KBLX
1480; it would tell you about traffic, where the accidents were, so I was
listening to that, and then they broke into the normal radio station. They
said that the president had been severely injured, that he'd been taken to
Parkland Hospital, and that he had been pronounced dead. I said, “Oh,
my gosh.” I just couldn't believe all this happened—things happened so
fast—and I just couldn't believe anything like it would happen, but it did.
Before I got off to Irving, the radio said they had captured a man
outside of the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, and the more they talked about
what went on, I put things together and realized they were talking about
Lee. I said, “My gosh. I can’t believe what I’m hearing.” Since I'd gotten
off early, my mother and my stepfather were up visiting one of my sisters
and her husband and three children. He had had a heart attack, so he was
in the hospital at Irving Boulevard and Pioneer. I thought, I can stop by
and check on him, so that’s what I did. I was in his room, and then a nurse
came to the door and said, “I have a phone call for you at the desk.”
I said, “Just patch it through here to the room.”
She said, “I’m new; I don't really know how to do that.”
I said, “OK, Pll be there in just a minute.” Well, I opened the door
to go to the nurses’ station, and two guys grabbed me and threw me up
against the wall; I was totally shocked. I said to them, “What is going on
here? Why are you doing this to me?”
They said, “We're arresting you.”
I said, “For what? I haven't done anything.”
That was Detective Rose and Detective Stovall. They took me to their
car, and we stopped at the Irving Police Station. They talked with someone
there, and then they took me on to downtown Dallas. They asked about
everything you could think of. It was just repetitious—over and over and
over for hours. Detective Rose and Stovall started off; then they took a
break, and two more detectives come in and quizzed me with the same
questions, over and over. They just asked me things about Lee and my
work and stuff like that. Things I knew I could tell them. They asked about
the package Lee had with him. I said, “He did bring a package with him
this morning.” They asked me about the length of the package, and I told
them, “It was roughly two feet, give or take an inch or two either way.”
36
BUELL FRAZIER
Every answer I gave them was the answer I knew. One time, Captain
Will Fritz, who was head of the Homicide Department, brought in a typed
statement, and he wanted me to sign it. Now, Captain Fritz, I’m sure, did a
lot of good things for the Dallas Police Department, but over the years, I’ve
asked myself: Somewhere along the line did he become like the people he hunted?
When he put the paper down in front of me, I started to read it. He
wanted me to sign a paper that I was confessing to being part of the assas-
sination and that I knew of it—that I had knowledge of it and that it was
going happen. I told him I wasn’t signing that. I told him it wasn't the
truth. Well, Captain Will Fritz was quite hot-tempered. When I told him
I wasnt signing it, he drew back his hand to hit me, and I took my arm up
to block. I was sitting there at the table, and all during the questioning, I
just had to look straight into a wall. I couldn't look sideways or anything,
and when I told him I wasn't going to sign it, I think he really could have
struck me. But I told him, “Outside that door are some policemen, and
before they get in here, we're going to have one hell of a fight. I’m going
to get some punches in.” He walked out, and I never did see the man
again. I dont want to come across as though I hated the man. I just was
so unhappy with the way he treated me.
On Saturday morning I was cleared to go home. ‘They cleared me
one time, and we were on the way out to Irving when they got a call and
turned around and brought me back. That’s when they did the finger-
prints and a mug shot. I couldn't believe what was going on. This was kind
of like a nightmare to me. We went back, and after more questioning and
so forth, they finally let me go. I didn't know anything about Lee shoot-
ing the policeman, J. D. Tippit.
When Id tell them something,
they'd come back and say, “Thats “Outside that door are
not true.” But I knew it was. I
knew what I was telling them
was the truth, and I didn’t devi- befi ore they get in here,
ate from that.
some policemen, and
3 e
were going to have one
On Sunday morning I was in § §
the kitchen there at the house. Td ell of a fight. a
just got through eating breakfast.
37
WHERE WERE You?
Someone turned the TV on, and there it was, live. They were going be
transporting Lee from the jail on Horowitz Street down to another jail.
They were in Dallas, and then they were in the basement. They said where
they were. There was a transfer, and everything was going to happen. As
we were watching, Jack Ruby stepped out of the crowd and stepped right
in to Lee and fired the shot.
-< i
It wasn't easy. I just sat down and asked myself, What have you gotten your-
self into? All Td wanted to do was come to work in Dallas, save money, go
to college. I wanted to go to college right out of high school, but I didn’t
have the money.
Since that weekend, it’s been kind of like a roller coaster. My life has
been valleys and peaks, and most of it’s been living in valleys far more
than peaks. Hasn't been good. I’ve had some good times, but I’ve also had
some rough times, trying to figure out: How do you adjust this. How do
you go on with this? I was just a young boy, nineteen years old, from a
rural town. I wasn’t worldly; I wasn't ready for anything like this. It was
just very hard. There were jobs I lost because they found out I was a friend
of Lee Harvey Oswald at one point. I have a hard time understanding
why someone would take something out on you when you had nothing to
do with it. Now, we know people read things, and the fact is: Everything
you read about the John F. Kennedy assassination is not true.
There’s so many books that have been written about this subject, and
some of the authors give their readers the impression that they know me
personally and they've talked to me. I wouldn't know them if I passed
them on the street. I’ve never talked with them. A lot of them just take
something out of somebody else's book and put it in their book. The truth
is the only thing that matters. So many people have not done that.
I know that right after this happened, the language I used to converse
in was very bad. I’m really ashamed of that, but that’s the way | talked.
That’s who I was at that time. A person can use bad grammar, but that
doesn’t mean you're a bad person. If I had been investigating this and ] was
questioning a young boy, me, what I would be most interested in was the
truth. Whether he used the correct grammar or not, that wouldnt even be
38
BUELL FRAZIER
considered by me. [ve
made a lot of improve-
ments in my grammar,
but I still make a few
errors now and then.
It’s just hard to realize
that this thing hap-
pened, even though it’s
been nearly fifty years.
I've asked myself
many times, How could
you be involved in it?
Howd you get involved
in that? Whyd that hap-
pen to you? Pm not angry with anybody. It’s just a bad thing that hap-
pened, and I just happened to be there. So I tell myself every morning
when I get up and shave, I look at myself and say, “Who is Buell Frazier?”
I know—but a lot of people don't have a clue because they try to judge
me from my past. l
I try to stay out of the limelight. I do things sometimes with the Sixth
Floor Museum, but I don’t go out looking for publicity. That’s just not
me. I think about it every year, but I just have some way I just deal with
it, because I know I can't change anything. If I could go back and change
things, it would never have happened—not to me, not to anyone. But it
did, and so you have to regroup and move on, and hopefully you learn
from things. Hopefully this country’s learned a few things.
I firmly believe, if you go back and look at where America was in 1963,
with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, that’s when America began to
fall from Gods grace. Ihe man I know as Lee Oswald, I didn’t think he
was capable of the assassination. Pll tell you why. My sister’s three little
girls used to go down the street about half a block to Ruth Paine’s house.
Lee and Marina had two children. ‘They had two girls. One was just an
infant when this happened, and the other one was several years old. Lee
used to play with the neighborhood children around that large oak tree
that still stands there today, and sometimes I would hear them laughing.
23
WHERE WERE You?
They said, “That man that rides to work with you; he’s a nice man.” You
stop and think about a child. A child can see a lot of things in a person
that adults can't see. So, two Lee Harvey Oswalds? Possible. I think they
had the body exhumed, and they measured it and so forth. Or did he have
split personalities? I’ve asked myself that many times over the past years.
I’ve asked myself, Did I really know the true Lee Oswald?
I don’t come to Dallas very often, because it has a lot of bad memories
for me.
40
Marie Tippit
In 1963 Marie Tippit was living in the Dallas suburb of Oak Cliff, not far
from Lee Oswald’s apartment. She was thirty-five, married for eighteen
years to thirty-nine-year-old Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit. The couple had
three children—two boys, ages thirteen and five, and a girl, age ten—
and lived paycheck to paycheck on J. D.’s $490-per-month income. Offi-
cer Tippit was cited for bravery twice. On the morning of November 22,
1963, Marie got a call that their son, Allan, was sick and needed to be
picked up from school. He was there when his father came home for a
quick lunch. About an hour later, a relative called with the news: J. D. had
been shot to death by the man suspected of assassinating the president.
t started out as an ordinary day: Got the kids off to school; J. D. went to
work. He was working day hours. He had the rotating shift, so every-
thing was going as usual. Allan, the oldest, got sick at school, so I went to
school and picked him up and brought him home. Then J. D. called and
said could I make him a sandwich; he wanted to stop by and have a bite
to eat. They were real busy; the president was coming to town, so he could
just run by and get a sandwich. I was really fast in those days. I'd fry some
potatoes and have the sandwich ready by the time he drove there. ‘This
was really something for him to come home for lunch. J. D. never got to
come home for lunch.
He ate lunch and of course left. Allan was watching the television,
waiting for the president to come on so that he could see what they were
doing. He had the radio on as well because they had announced that the
president was shot. I said, “OK, Allan, you're going have to turn one of
those off. How about just turn the radio on in your room?’ I think that’s
how we missed hearing J. D.’s name mentioned on the television.
AI
WHERE WERE You?
His district was in Oak
Cliff, so I thought he would
probably be safe, just busy, you
know, working on things that
happened in that area. Little
did I know that he would
encounter the killer of the
president.
From what I was later told,
J. D. noticed Oswald walking
down the street toward the
squad car, and when Oswald
saw that it was a squad car,
he turned around and started
going the other direction.
That was when J. D. became
suspicious.
J. D.’s sister, Chris, called
and asked, “Have you heard
from J. D.?”
I said, “Well, he came home for lunch.”
She said Wayne, their brother who lived in Lubbock, had just called
and said he had heard—on the radio or television. I dont remember
which—that J. D. had been killed. She said, “You need to go check and
find out for sure.”
I didn’t really want to believe that. So I called the station and told
them who I was and asked them, would they check on Officer J. D. Tip-
pit—that I needed to know if he was all right. They told me that, no, he
was not. J. D. had been killed. This was a day that everything was turned
upside down.
J. D. and Marie Tippit
I called very quickly. I didn’t give them a chance to visit me iey
probably would have later, but I didn’t give them a chance. I had called
already. Patsy Anglin, the wife of another policeman, lived three doors
down and was my best friend. I called her and told her that she needed
to come down quickly. I needed her. At that point, Allan and I were both
42
Martie Tippir
crying. It was just unreal. He was so upset, and so was I. He came down
and stayed with me, and one of the neighbors went to the school and
brought Brenda home.
People start showing up at our door at that point, police officers and
news media people as well. I was so upset that I just—it was so unbe-
lievably horrifying that I appreciated their company and their concern
and their love for me, that they came and showed they cared. I never
got bitter and angry. That’s not a Christian’s attitude. You just go to the
Lord, and you pray about it, so that’s what I did. I asked the Lord for
his guidance and strength to see it through. Without that, I don't think
I would have made it then or now, so I’m really thankful looking back
that I didn’t get bitter. That wouldn't have brought J. D. back, and that’s
all I wanted.
It was so hard because when youre married, you grow closer together.
We'd grown so close together that he was the other part of me that was
missing, and I didn't know what to do about it. I didn’t know how I was
going to carry on. |
I got mail from all over the world, and there were a thousand cranes
that Japanese students made and sent to me that signified that you had a
million years of happiness on Earth and in Heaven. I kept them hanging
in my house as a reminder to the children that people care about others
all over the world. You don't have to be next door to care about them. We
got some financial support as well. The financial support certainly helped
take care of the children, and it showed them all the love that the people
felt and the concern they had, realizing the situation we were in. We were
so grateful and appreciative.
Robert Kennedy called me and told me that he was so sorry that J. D.
had been killed and that if Jack hadn't come to town he would probably
still be alive. I said, “Yes, that’s true, but both of them were doing their job.
J. D. as the patrolman out there,
and him as the president of the
United States. They just hap- I didn’t know how I was
pened to be at the wrong place
at the wrong time.” He was such gOINg fo carry on.
a nice fellow. It was just so nice
43
WHERE WERE You?
to talk to him because he had genuine concern, and I felt that he could
understand. We were comforting each other.
Lyndon Johnson called me as well, and I spoke with him. I appreci-
ated that. I did correspond with Jacqueline Kennedy. She sent me a letter,
and I appreciated it so much because she said in the letter if she could ever
do anything for me just to let her know. She said that she had lit a flame
for Jack and it would burn forever, and she would consider that it burned
for my husband too.
Dear Mrs. Tippit,
What can I say to you? My husbands death is responsible for you
losing your husband. Wasn't one life enough to take on that day? You
must be so bitter. I don't blame you if you are. Please know that I think
of you all the time, not that that can help in any way. It doesnt seem
fair to me that, because my husband was more famous than yours, that
more attention is turned toward my bereavement than to yours.
If there is anything I can ever do for you for the rest of my life, it
would make me so happy if I knew you would ask me. You know, I lit
a flame for Jack at Arlington that will burn forever. I consider that tt
burns for your husband, and so will everyone who ever sees tt.
With my inexpressible sympathy,
Jacqueline Kennedy
That tells you what a wonderful lady she was. She was so considerate
and thoughtful of other people, and this was someone who could understand
how I felt; we really shared a bond. That’s the thing you always want: some-
body just to understand how you feel—and she did. She had children she
had to raise by herself: Even though she was first lady of the United States,
Ilit a flame for Jack at Arlington that will burn
forever. I consider that it burns for your husband,
and so will everyone who ever sees it.”
44
Marte lippir
she recognized that I was suffering too.
Isnt that wonderful, that we had a first
lady that was so caring of everyone?
Afterward, life became very much
a struggle because I had to deal with
three kids who loved their daddy so
much and were so close to him. Curtis
would sit at the window and watch for
him when it was time for him to come
home. That’s pretty emotional. Brenda
was getting stomachaches every day.
Curtis was getting stomachaches. You have to deal with all that, along
with your own grief. How can you have the strength, as Mrs. Kennedy
said, to keep going?
Now there is a plaque where J. D. fell. I’m so proud we have that now.
When I’m there, I just tell him how much I loved him, how much I miss
him, that someday I'll be able to see him again in Heaven. I wished for
that many times—that I could have another conversation with J. D., that
I could just see him again. I think that’s normal, isn't it? Probably every-
body does that. I'd tell him how much we miss him, how much we need
him and love him. Id tell him his name lives on forever, not only in my
heart and the children’s hearts, but many others’ I know as well.
People began to be more concerned about others. I know there were
a number of good things that happened for others as a direct result of
J. D.s death. The police department had no insurance for their police
officers, and because of J. D. they went ahead and got insurance for them.
The state didn’t pay any money for widows to help them, and now they
do. J. D. caused that. I'm thankful for that. When there’s such a tragedy,
there’s always something good comes of it, and that was good.
Ive thought about that day every day for fifty years. J. D. had a won-
derful sense of humor. He was caring about everybody else. He was such
a loving person, and he made friends easily, and he was a Christian man.
He wanted to do things that were right, and that really attracted me as
well. As long as he was around, I knew I was loved. There’ll never be
another man for me.
45
John Brewer and Ray Hawkins
About ninety steps from the movie theater where Oswald sought refuge
after killing both President Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit, twenty-
two-year-old John Brewer was managing Hardy’s Shoe Store. Listening
to reports about the assassination, he learned about Tippit’s murder
just blocks away. After Oswald walked down Jefferson Boulevard and
ducked into the theater, Brewer alerted police, who quickly came and
arrested the assassin. On the day Kennedy came to Dallas, thirty-one-
year-old Ray Hawkins, a married father of two, was one of the few
patrolmen not assigned to the presidential visit. Instead he was work-
ing as a traffic accident investigator when he heard over the police
radio that an officer had been shot in the Oak Cliff suburb. Each man
played a key role in locating and arresting the assassin, and this is the
first time the two have sat down together to recall the events of the day.
OHN BREWER: I had noticed this guy as he walked into the win-
dow area of our storefront, and I thought it was pretty strange that
somebody would be shopping for shoes with all the commotion going
on and the police cars going by. Then I said, “I know this guy from some-
where. I recognize him.” But mainly it was his actions and his trying to
avoid any part of what was going on out here that caught my attention. I
was listening to the radio, knowing a policeman had been shot; they'd give
a description, but instantly, when he walked into the recessed area, it was
like, Tve seen him somewhere before. T couldn't place where.
What led me to pursue him wasn't so much that I'd seen him before
but the way he was acting—hiding himself from all the police cars that
were converging at the Tenth and Patton area. So those two things: One,
I'd seen him, and the way he acted.
46
JOHN BREWER AND Ray Hawkins
It took a while, but I realized that he had been a customer weeks
before. I had sold him a pair of shoes, $4.70. (Our highest-price shoes,
the deluxe shoes, were $7.70.) It was at night, and stores were only open
one night a week, on Thursday. This was a Thursday night and, as near as
I can figure, maybe six weeks before. He was a very fastidious customer,
very hard to make up his mind. I just let him be and stepped away from
him. In sales, the last person who speaks wins . . . or loses—so I let him
try them on, and finally he said, “PFI take them.”
On this day, when the police cars went by, I was standing just inside
the door observing him, and he was looking at me—he looked me square
in the eye too. He was looking through the door, and I know there was
recognition because he'd seen me. When the police cars all got by and the
sound was more in the distance,
he turned around, looked over
his shoulder, and walked out and Twas standing just inside
geen Ub tne street the door observing him,
I just had a feeling that some-
thing was wrong with this picture— and he was looking at me.
that he was suspicious—and yet
an
(PHOTOGRAPH BY LAWRENCE SCHILLER)
WHERE WERE You?
he wasnt panicky; he wasnt run-
ning. ve heard he-was running—he
wasnt—he was just walking at a nice
pace. But it was just a gut feeling that
something was up. Why do you pre-
tend to be shopping for shoes when
all this commotion is going on?
I didn’t connect him to the
assassination, which I had heard
about. I was also aware that Ofh-
cer Tippit had been shot and killed
just a few blocks from here, and that
probably—with a description from
the radio station I was listening to—
led to more wonderment and What
the heck is going on here? While I was
walking, he had already entered the
Texas Theatre—you could see him
Exterior of the Texas Theatre, where
go in. I stood there fora second and Oswald was apprehended
thought, What am I fixin’ to get into? (PHOTOGRAPH BY LAWRENCE SCHILLER)
NOSE
Interior of the Texas Theatre (PHOTOGRAPH BY LAWRENCE SCHILLER)
48
Jonn BREWER AND Ray Hawkins
Why am I doing this? But I just
kept walking. I didnt know the guy had
The story got out that j :
Oswald was busted for not buy- 4 .38 in his Ê ocket.
ing a ticket. Totally wrong. I
asked Julie Postal, the cashier, if
she had sold a ticket to a man matching his description. I only wanted
confirmation that somebody else saw what I saw. I could have cared less
if he was buying a ticket, so he wasn't busted for that. She said, no, she
hadn't sold a ticket to anybody that matched that description; she had
been out on the sidewalk watching all the commotion as well. I said, “The
fella I saw went into the theater; I’m going inside.” Once I got inside, I
saw Butch Burrows, who was the concessionaire. I asked him the same
question. “Did you see this fella’—matching the description I gave him—
“come in?” He said, no, that hed been busy stocking his concessions. I
said, “Well, he came in here, and there's something funny about him. Let’s
go look.”
Butch went with me. We went up to the balcony, didn't see anything,
and then went back down to the theater’s lower level; didn’t see him. I
went behind the curtain that leads out to the fire escape, out into the alley,
and I said, “Butch, I’m going to stand here. You go up to the front, and
if anybody matching this description starts to leave, stop him.” I didn’t
know the guy had a .38 in his pocket. l
I came back out and reported to Julie Postal that the guy was still
there. She hadn't seen him. I said, “Call the police,” so Julie made the
phone call. That’s when I went back in. Butch was up front, and I was in
the back; I still hadn't seen him.
The house lights in the theater came on, and that was the first time
I really spotted him inside the theater. He stood up for a second like he
was going to leave and then just turned around and sat right back down
within one seat or so of where he had been sitting. That was the first time
I saw him in the theater, but I thought, Gotcha!
I still had no idea what he had done, no clue. But, son, you did
something. You did something. When he pulled that gun out on Officer
McDonald, I knew he had done something.
ay)
WHERE WERE You?
RAY HAWKINS: John
Brewer and 1 first-met at the back
door of this theater. All we had
was the description that John had
given whenever he talked on the
phone. He said that a suspicious
man dressed like the suspect had
come in here. We were over at
the library at that time. We first
had a report that someone fitting
his description had gone into the
library. We found out that wasn't
true. Then they said John had
called in, that there was a man in
the theater who hadnt paid to go
in, so that’s about what we knew then. I knew that J. D. had been killed,
so it was a very dangerous situation. I was an accident investigator at the
time, and of course I was in uniform, but no bulletproof vest.
When I first came through the door, I thought John was the suspect.
BREWER: I remember opening a door and being immediately
grabbed—I don't know how many were out there, but there had to be at
least half a dozen to ten or so. I had to explain quickly that there was a
person in here that I was suspicious of and, basically, “I’m on your side. I’m
not the bad guy.” Officer McDonald asked if he should go out here, and,
just before he knocked on the door, the house lights came on. That was
actually the first time I saw Oswald, even though I was sure he was in the
theater. There was a curtain back by the exit, and I was looking through
the curtain when the house lights came on. The movie continued to play.
Oswald stood up as if he was going to leave and moved maybe one seat
over but basically sat back down in the same position on the same row.
Officer McDonald, myself, and another officer—I don't know his name—
walked out on the stage. I pointed to Oswald, and Oswald was just sitting
there, calm as he could be.
I pointed him out from the stage, but I probably wouldn't have been
there if Id been aware that he was armed. I had no idea—didn't even
50
Joun BREWER AND Ray Hawkins
enter my mind. He just kind of stared, glared back. I jumped off the stage,
and Officer McDonald came up the left side, as you face the audience.
Another officer and I walked up the right side. Officer McDonald was
tapping people on the shoulder, telling them to get up, to move, but all
the while he was keeping his eye on Oswald. Just as Officer McDonald
walked into the aisle, tapping him to get up, Oswald got up. He threw a
hard left cross and knocked Officer McDonald back into the seat.
I'm standing maybe ten or twelve feet away. Almost in the same
motion, he reaches under his shirt, which was not tucked in, and pulls out
a pistol—I think it was a revolver—and puts it right in Officer McDon-
ald’s face. Officer McDonald had recovered basically; he got back up,
wrestled the gun away from him, and I’m sure I saw Oswald pull the
trigger. But Officer McDonald has said that the hammer hit the fleshy
part between his thumb and forefinger, preventing the gun from firing.
Immediately the gun was taken away from Oswald, and then cops were
coming over the backs of the chairs. They werent getting cheap shots in,
but they were going to arrest this guy.
HAWKINS: I came up the aisle and heard Nick McDonald say, “I’ve
got him.” Then at I saw that they were locked up in a fight, and I went up
and got Oswald’s left hand into the handcuffs; it seemed like two or three
minutes, but it wasn't that long. It was a lot of chaos. It rained police. One
of the officers even jumped down off the balcony to assist in the arrest, but
we had enough police there at that time. The only thing I heard Oswald
say was “I haven't done nothing.” That’s exactly what he said. Other than
that, I didn't hear anything. There were so many police then and so much
confusion, it was kind of hard to hear who was saying what.
BREWER: As they were leading him out toward the side I was
standing on, he looked me straight in the face, and I heard him say, “I’m
not resisting arrest.” Ihat was kind of hard to swallow, that he wasn't
resisting after having tried to kill a policeman. At the time, I really wasn’t
thinking he might’ve been the assassin of President Kennedy because of
the distance from downtown to here. I felt
that maybe he did have something to do with ; l
Officer Tippit’s murder, but it didn’t really It rained police.
dawn on me until I got home that evening, § ===
WHERE WERE You?
turned on the television, and there was Oswald, down at the police station
with Captain Will Fritz. I said, “Damn.”
HAWKINS: When I came in here, I was also looking for somebody
who had shot Officer Tippit. I hadn't yet made the connection to Presi-
dent Kennedy. When I heard that he was the chief suspect in the assas-
sination of the president—oh, my—I thought we were lucky to be here,
just living through that. But I don't even know what I thought when we
were coming up the aisle in the theater before we found out he could be
connected with the assassination. It was just really a weird night, a weird
day and a weird night, really. We were lucky that nobody else was shot.
I don’t know why Oswald let us walk all the way up in the theater and
didn't shoot one of us. I thought of that afterward; I didn’t think of it then.
I thought we were lucky just to lose one officer.
BREWER: When Oswald pulled the pistol, it kind of brought me
back into focus, and still I’m wondering, Why am I doing this? What have I
just got myself into? What am I doing here? Pretty soon, it kind of all came
together that it was probably a pretty good thing. It happened so fast, and
yet it kind of plays back in slow motion a lot of times. But I really didnt
have time to think about what was going on, what danger there might be,
or anything—it was just fast.
HAWKINS: They had a car out front that we put him in after we got
him handcuffed and everything. There was quite a crowd out there too.
They wanted to do their own justice. They were angry.
BREWER: I didn’t see that because I was detained here, getting
information. By the time I got outside, it'd already cleared out and was
just like a ghost town. Shops were closing up.
HAWKINS: When I saw his face, he looked like just another citizen.
He had a little mark across his face or two after we arrested him. But he
just looked like an ordinary citizen, someone you would see walking down
the street, which he had been doe Nothing outstanding in one way or
another that I could see.
BREWER: I got home and turned on the TV. My wife at that time
worked for Blue Cross Blue Shield downtown. They had closed down, as
everybody else had. I’ve got the TV on, and my wife says, “That happened
pretty close to where you—’ I said, “Yeah, that happened pretty close.”
Joun BREWER AND Ray Hawkins
Then my mom called from Lockhart, Texas, and said, “I just saw that
Oswald was arrested by your shop. I just pray you werent anywhere near
that.”
I said, “Mom, I got a story to tell you.” It still didn’t dawn me, really.
But then the news came in more and more. They're showing Oswald;
they're showing the rifle there at the police station, showing Captain Will
Fritz. And then you hear Oswald saying he didnt do anything—he was
seeking representation, I believe. It really started sinking in that he actu-
ally was the main and only suspect for the Kennedy assassination, and it
was pretty much a given that he had murdered Officer Tippit.
I came to work the next morning, and of course there were sound
trucks and all sorts of media trucks out. I thought, I’m not used to that,
and it was just pretty much rapid fire, speaking with reporters, media. In
fact, it got pretty annoying after a while, and it went on for quite a while,
maybe a couple of months. Then I was transferred to the downtown store
on Main Street, and it kind of started quieting down. We didn't have that
mass or instant media like they've got now. It still didn’t dawn on me just
how big an operation that was, but it did dawn on me that, like Ray said,
a lot of people could have got hurt.
HAWKINS: The next day at headquarters, we were still doing reports
and getting it all together, and it was really busy. There were four or five of
us who had come in the theater first, and we were all writing up reports
and letters to the chief on what had happened. But what had happened
finally sank in that day. It didn't seem that night like any of this stuff had
happened earlier, or it wasnt anything. Then it did sink in—the next day,
really—that any number of us could have been killed. I could have been
shot; any of us could have been shot.
On Sunday I was watching TV at home. I saw Jack Ruby shoot
Oswald. I knew Jack, had been to his club a few times. He wanted to be
noticed and known; he really liked the police. He just wanted everybody
to like him, I would say, especially the police. Several of them went to his
club, kind of a police hangout, because he was friendly with police. You
could go after hours and have a beer.
I didn’t realize who it was at first. Then I heard them, or I saw when
they pulled him back who it was, and I thought, O/, no. I just couldn't
53
WHERE WERE You?
believe it was Jack who did it. Then a lot of people said he was connected
with the Mafia hete and in Chicago and all this, but I never did get that
impression of him. He was just somebody who liked the police and was
good to the police and wanted a little attention. He liked it. He liked us
to recognize him, and if we took someone down to his club, he was always
friendly. But it was a surprise.
BREWER: I was out in the parking lot when Ruby shot Oswald,
washing this brand-new Ford Galaxy XL that Id taken delivery on the
night before the assassination. I wasn’t even supposed to be on duty at the
store the next day. My assistant called in, his young child was ill, so I went
to fill in. I had every intention just to cruise around in that car, which had
a police interceptor engine in it, so I didn’t see the Ruby shooting at all.
My wife came out and said, “Come in; you're not going to believe this.” It
was just—damn, when is this going to stop?
I thought before and after that it wasn’t Dallas’s fault. A lot of people
took it upon themselves to make Dallas the whipping child. Dallas, to
me, didn’t change. I enjoyed Dallas, I enjoyed going to the Cotton Bowl,
where we would watch Tom Landry and Roger Staubach.
HAWKINS: I agree with you, John. The city itself got a bad name,
but there was really no way of stopping what occurred. It seemed that
after this happened, the citizens banded together; they even seemed to
take more interest in the police department. I think it hurt a lot of people.
I know I didn’t appreciate the things that were said about Dallas, but I
was born and raised in Dallas. I felt it was a bad story that they put on the
city, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about that.
BREWER: When I got out of the service in 1969, I had the option
of staying in Dallas, retaining my job. I'd already grown tired of the assas-
sination, so I moved to Austin. To this day—it’s kicked off a little bit the
past couple of years—there are people who have known me for the longest
time, who I work with, who have no idea I was involved, unless they came
into the house and might have seen something framed. There was a letter
from President Johnson, and they'll ask, “What’s this?” But I play it really
low key. Many people don’t have a clue. I have recently been recognized
by the Dallas Police Department, got its Good Citizen Award—but I was
just in the right place at the right time, however dangerous it was.
54
Jonn BREWER AND Ray Hawkins
Brewer (left) and Hawkins
HAWKINS: And you handled it right, didn’t get shot at the back
door or anything.
BREWER: I appreciate that. The assassination brought the country
together. It was scary times when we listened to the Cuban Missile Crisis
live broadcast of the Russian ships turning around, so there was a lot of
Cold War tension. The assassination kind of centralized Dallas, and after-
ward I don't know if it was a coming together or just a realizing that, hey,
we've all grown up here pretty quick. .
HAWKINS: I think it did bring the country together. The United
States, a lot of people, myself being one of them, didn’t really pay much
attention to the election. We voted, but I don't think we really put that
much into it. I think this got everybody more interested in government,
exactly what was going on, and things our government was doing. I felt
like it did that much for us. It changed me. I, one of those who didn’t pay
a lot of attention to politics, now tried to stay up on things that were hap-
pening in the country more than I had before.
BREWER: A couple of weeks later I had a customer on a late after-
noon and saw a taxi pull up out front. This lady got out, and I recognized
her from TV. It was Marguerite Oswald. She walked in just like Here I
am and said, “Mr. Brewer.” I said, “Yes, Mrs. Oswald?” My customer kind
55
WHERE WERE You?
er of looked up. She only wanted
It was Marguerite Oswald. *° 5 that she felt Lee was
fen ie i innocent, and she wanted to
She walked in JUS t like hear from me what had hap-
Here I am and said, “Mr. pened. Not taking any sides,
I said, “Mrs. Oswald, I don't
know for sure that he did kill
the president, but I’m pretty
Brewer.”
sure he killed a policeman. I’m
pretty sure he was involved, but, as a mother, youre standing up for your
son.” She said nothing, she just twirled around, hopped in the cab, and
away she went.
I still see that scene in my mind fifty years later, every day just about.
Something just real brief, but I think about it quite a bit. I don’t dwell
on it, but it was a part of my life and continues to be. Not a bad part at
all, but I’m not just a one-trick pony. I’ve done other things to define my
life. But it’ll be part of the legacy, I guess. Not a bad one, not a bad one
at all. I acted on instinct, not knowing where it was going or how big
it was—a little instinct and some stupidity probably, not knowing what
could happen.
56
Ruth Hyde Paine
Raised in Columbus, Ohio, Ruth Hyde Paine, a Quaker convert, moved
to the Dallas suburb of Irving with her husband after he got a job with
Bell Helicopter in Fort Worth. By 1963 they had separated amicably,
and she was a thirty-one-year-old single mother and part-time Russian
language teacher. That same year, through her interest in Russian, she
met and befriended the Oswalds.
was in Irving, which is a suburb of Dallas. A friend of mine knew
that I was studying Russian and knew this couple was coming to a
party he was having, so he invited me, thinking I might enjoy meeting
them. Marina was a young mother who didn’t speak English and didn’t
understand the English at the party, so I talked with her in a bedroom
where she was changing June’s—her baby’s—diaper. We just talked about
mother things; we both had very young children.
She was glad to have someone to talk to. I had studied angel Rus-
sian that I could converse with her a little bit, and I could understand
what she said, which helped a lot. Her husband, Lee, was enjoying the
attention of telling about going to Russia, then deciding that wasn’t a
good place, then coming back. He was talking to the group in the living
room or kitchen, wherever it was, about that. But I wasn't really listening;
I was mostly spending my time with Marina in a separate room.
I realized she was feeling very lonely, so I got their address—they
didn’t have a telephone—and wrote to her. I asked if I could come by
sometime to visit, and we worked that out. I visited at least once, and
another time we invited both of them to my house to have dinner with
me and my husband. Although we were separated at this point, he did
come for dinner occasionally; we all had dinner together.
a7
WHERE WERE YOU?
Lee didn’t talk very much.
He didn’t want to talk English
with me, but he would talk with
my husband, Michael. I over-
heard some of the conversation.
I felt like Lee would take offense
if you disagreed with him, that it
was easy to have him dismiss you
as somebody who didn’t under-
stand things. I wasn't willing or
able, for that matter, to talk poli-
tics with him, so I avoided talk-
ing with him.
Marina really did care about
him. He was kind of exotic in
Russia, somebody very different
and interesting, and apparently
oe o Fa Fhe paid attention to her and so
Ruth Hyde Paine visits the Dallas Police 9" But she did find herself in a
Department (PHOTOGRAPH BY LAWRENCE country where she didnt speak
SCHILLER) the language, and he didn't want
her to learn it, which really both-
ered me. She just didn't have very many friends. I learned later that they
did have some friends in the Russian community but at that point were
not seeing them, and they had very little money. He lost his job in Dallas
at a photographic shop. I went to visit one time when they were living in
Oak Cliff, and he said he was going to look for work in New Orleans and
had bought a bus ticket for Marina to go to New Orleans with her little
baby and all the paraphernalia that goes with that. I was kind of appalled.
He was going to send a letter when he had a place for her to come to, and
I said, “Why doesn’t she just come and stay with me for a couple weeks or
whatever it takes while you look for a place? Then you can call me and say
when youre ready to have her come down.”
He did, and after about two weeks I drove Marina and the baby, along
with my two kids, to New Orleans. They were there over the summer, and
58
Ruru Hype PAINE
when I visited them in New Orleans, I
discovered that Marina, eight months I wasnt willin gor
pregnant, had never seen a doctor. I
was worried about that. ab le, fe or that matte r,
Then Lee was saying he was zo talk politics with
going to look for work somewhere ; :
else. He‘ lost his job again, and I said, him, so I avoided
“You havent been able to get medi- talking with him.
cal care here because you haven't lived
in Orleans Parish long enough to get
help with that. But you've lived in Dallas County long enough. Come
back, and she can stay with me. I can get her to a doctor’s care, and to the
hospital if necessary, and could translate to do that. So how about if she
just stayed with me for a little while?” He was really quite glad of that. He
seemed grateful, helped us pack up the car and everything.
He looked quite sad when she was leaving. There really was caring
between them. It was a troubled relationship, and Marina did wonder
whether she could stay with him and whether it would be all right. She
said, “He has fantasies,” and she was worried about his doing things in
order to think of himself as a great man. I could see how she was worried
about him.
We got back to Irving, and she was at my house from the end of Sep-
tember really until the day after the assassination. Lee showed up early in
October to say he was in town and ask if he could come out. He actually
asked if I could come and get him in Dallas, and Marina, who talked with
him on the phone, said I couldn't because I had just given blood at Park-
land Hospital, anticipating that she would be there. They wanted a blood
donation as the only way we could pay for entering there if the baby came.
Anyway, he hitchhiked out and spent the weekend, and he spent
almost every weekend from then until Thanksgiving. They were definitely
friendly. Probably being separated was actually good for the relationship;
they then enjoyed each other, and he was relieved of some anxiety about
their care. They sat on the sofa, watched a movie or something together;
he patted his lap, and she sat on his lap—there was definite affection there.
~
59
WHERE WERE You?
One day I was next door at a
My nei gh bors aid her neighbor's, discussing the fact that
ath à hi itd been well over a week, maybe
rother Was Wor. Ing at two, and he wasn’t having any luck
the School Book Deposi- finding a job, and his unemploy-
ment payments were coming to an
= and he thought they end. Here was a young man who
might be still hiring. didn’t drive. He went right into
the Marine Corps at age seven-
teen, lied to get in, and the kinds
of jobs he could get were pretty limited. My neighbor said her brother was
working at the School Book Depository, and he thought they might be
still hiring; it was early fall.
They were delivering books, so I translated to Marina what the con-
versation had been about. She asked me to tell Lee that when he called,
which he usually did in the evening to talk to her. I told him; I guess he
showed up at the School Book Depository, and they hired him.
< i
There was a lot of fear about President Kennedy coming to Dallas. Just a
few weeks before, Adlai Stevenson had been poorly received there. A lady
banged him on the head with a placard, and there was a lot of hostility.
People were worried. It was definitely in the air.
Marina thanked me for turning on the TV that morning, and we
watched the motorcade as it came into Dallas. It was such an enthusiastic
crowd, and the feelings were so good in the reception. I heard over the
television that shots had been fired and that the president’s head had been
hit. I was afraid it might be fatal.
Marina said, “Oh, this is so sad for Mrs. Kennedy and for the two
children.” She was feeling as a parent how that would be. I lit a candle,
and she said, “Is that a way of praying?” I said, “Yes, it’s just my way.” Ihen
we sat watching television until we heard that he was, in fact, dead.
It was really not too long after that there was a knock at the door, and
several police officers said they had Lee Oswald in custody for shooting
an officer. They wondered if they could come in, and I asked, “You have a
60
Ruru Hype PAINE
warrant?” They didn't, but I didn’t see any problem with their coming in.
One of them asked, “Did Lee have a gun?” I said, “No,” and translated to
Marina. She said, “Yes, he did,” and led them into the garage, where there
was a blanket roll. She thought the gun was in there; she had seen it there.
‘The police officer picked up the blanket roll and it folded over his arm.
I realized that there had been a gun and that it was gone, that he probably
had come out that night, as he never had on a weeknight before, and got
the gun. It was at that point, when I saw the blanket roll was empty and
discovered that he'd had a gun, that I thought it could’ve been Lee. I felt
like, whatever these policemen need, [ll help them find what they need.
But it was the loss of Kennedy that was the most powerful feeling for me
right then. That it might’ve been Lee who shot him was added distress.
But I really was like the rest of the country, feeling that loss.
It’s very hard to go back through the pain of that time.
The police wanted us all to come down to the police station, to make
statements and so on. Marina really didn't say anything. She was very
worried and distressed, but we all were. They wanted her to come, but
they wouldn't let her go into the bathroom to change her clothes; they
didn’t want her to disappear from their view. I had to get a babysitter to
stay with my son, who was asleep. The police had no idea who we were or
what kind of people we were, so they were very nervous. At the police sta-
tion, we were separated, put in different rooms, and I was grateful to hear
that they'd arranged for a translator to be with Marina. They interviewed
me and had me look over a statement, which I signed after I corrected
the grammar. My mind was reeling at that point—you go into a kind of
stupor almost, not really able to take it all in.
We went back to my house after the police station. We came back,
and Lee’s mother was there as well. She didnt know about the new
baby—the second daughter was born in October, and Lee didn’t want
his mother to know about it. He didn’t want any contact with his mother.
Marina felt that was wrong, so when she saw Marguerite Oswald, there
was a reunion; Marina showed her the baby and so on. They all came back
to my house. Marguerite hinted that it would be very hard for her to get
back to Fort Worth, so I said, “If you can sleep on the sofa, you can stay
at my house.”
6I
WHERE WERE You?
Marguerite and Marina were together in the evening, and I was putting
my kids to bed; it was late. We knew it was going be a hard day the next
day; we'd better get sleep if we could. I don't really know what Marina did
at that point with her mother-in-law. The next morning some people Mar-
guerite had invited from Life magazine came with a translator; they were
going with Marina and Marguerite to try to see Lee at the jail. They left
that morning with Marina’s two little girls. I didn't see Marina again until
after she testified in Washington. She left on the 23rd, that next morning,
and it was well into March of the next year before I saw her. I think she was
getting advice, probably from Oswald’s brother, not to talk to me.
~~ aaua
General Walker—that’s a very important story, and it’s often overlooked,
especially by the people who want the assassination to be a plot. I learned
all this after the assassination, as did the rest of the world. Nobody knew
about it until after the assassination, except Marina. Lee had written her
a note, and he left, not saying where he was going; he had a whole plan
diagrammed. He’d taken photographs of the home where Edwin Walker
lived. This was in April, less than a month after he got his mail-order rifle.
He actually thought he had hit Walker—he broke the glass, but
Walker had moved just at that point. Lee apparently hid the rifle and
either walked home or took a bus or something. Then he made fun of
the people who said they saw cars speeding away. He said, “Everybody
in America thinks you have to have a car.” But Marina was very dis-
tressed, didn’t know what to do. She was very dependent on her husband,
so she hid the note he’d written: “Here’s the key to the post office. If I
am arrested, this is where the jail is. Don't keep my clothes, but keep my
papers. You can get help from the embassy’—a variety of things that said
he didn’t expect to come home or that he might not. She hid the note in
a book, telling him that if he ever showed crazy ideas like this, shed teli
the police or something. l
I didn't know the note was in the book, but I was sending things to
Marina those days after she left, things for the babies that she called and
asked for or letters that came for her, money—people were very generous
to help this woman who was a stranger in our land. One of the things I
Ruru Hype PAINE
sent was this book. When Oswald was shot on Sunday, an Irving police
officer arrived at the front of my house in a car. He came into the house
and wanted to close all the curtains and peer out, not knowing what else
might be going on. I convinced him that he didn't have to close the cur-
tains. I was afraid he'd scare my kids. But I was sending things through
the Irving police. I'd take things to their police officer out in front of my
house and say, “Can you get this to Marina?” and I’m sure they did.
The book was one of the things that went to Marina. This was almost
two weeks after the assassination. Two Secret Service guys showed up at
my house and showed me the note that was in the book; it was in Rus-
sian. Whoever wrote it didn't know the word for “key,” because he trans-
literated it. The Russian speaker, who apparently was trying to see what
language I knew, did all the talking.
He said, “Mrs. Paine, you sent this note.”
I said, “No, I’ve never seen this note.”
“Do you recognize the handwriting?”
“No, I don't recognize the handwriting.”
He was back and forth. I was saying, “I don't know a thing about this,”
and he was saying, “You did this.” So I finally got polite and talked to the
English speaker and said, “He’s telling me that I sent this note, and I’m
telling you I didn't.”
The other guy said, “Well, it was in a book.”
I said, “I sent a book.”
We might never have found out about that attempt except for the
accidental discovery through the book. Because the Oswalds’ things were
When Oswald was shot on Sunday, an Irving
police officer arrived at the front of my house in a
car. He came into the house and wanted to close all
the curtains and peer out, not knowing what else
might be going on.
63
WHERE WERE YOU?
in my garage, they could've come and gone after the assassination, the
book included, and. that note would never have come to light. I’m dis-
tressed that it doesn't get more attention, that people don't recognize the
importance of Lee’s having tried to kill General Walker.
I was watching television and
saw Lee shot. It was around
noon, and there was quite a
while when I couldn't manage
lunch. I did feel some relief in a
sense, like a closure. It was only
later that I realized we'd lost a
lot of information—what he
could’ve told us about why, or
what he thought.
He was already a fragile
personality, and he might've
come apart while in prison. He
had done an odd thing, like telling us how to call him if the second baby
came while he was in Dallas but not telling us the name to ask for. He
was using an assumed name. So I had only just the week before seen that
he wasn't really glued together very well. There were gaps, and I think he
would’ve deteriorated in custody.
Some time later, Marina invited me to meet her at a friend’s house
in Dallas, and I went over. She wanted to reassure me that the interview
with the old men at the Warren Commission would be all right and that
they were nice people. She was just being careful, friendly, to tell me that.
She’d been through a great deal of course.
She’s never tried to reach out to me again. I was following the lives of
Marina and the children for a while through Priscilla Johnson McMil-
lan, who interviewed Marina at length and was close to her. But recently
I don’t know the story of their lives. I knew at one point that she was
persuaded by the plot people to think that it could’ve not been Lee. I sup-
pose, in her place, one would prefer it not to be Lee.
64
Rura Hype PAINE
I think he did it, and I think he acted alone. The
Walker incident really illustrates how he could plan
something and carry it out and that he was willing
to try to kill somebody.
It comes up very little today. Very few people know unless I tell them.
It will come up because I had to say where I was going today. I feel very
lucky that most of the people who are sure there was a plot dont even
look me up. I’m spared that for the most part. I don't think there was plot.
I think he did it, and I think he acted alone. The Walker incident really
illustrates how he could plan something and carry it out and that he was
willing to try to kill somebody.
Why he did it? That’s the hardest thing of all. I don’t understand it all.
I think he had no particular anger at Kennedy. I feel like he was shooting
at the office, not at the man, that he wanted to do something big, which
he did. In the meantime, he cared’something about his wife and family,
but what could he have done that was worse for them?
History has been poorly served by all the plot stories that came out.
A book was written, within a month or shortly after the assassination,
by Mark Lane, who made quite a living talking to people about what
he thought. But he wouldn't talk to the Warren Commission. All these
people seem unwilling to think a single disgruntled person could do this.
The Secret Service has learned what kind of personality to watch. ‘There
was a program about that, and, boy, they nailed it. They said: a person who
could do planning, was reasonably intelligent, but was angry, dissociated
from other folks, and had the opportunity—and that was Lee.
The emotions really don’t fade. It’s like any form of grief. It’s always
there. You go on; you do other things. I’ve lived a couple of lives since
then; that’s the way it feels to me. I went back to school, became a school
psychologist, taught, and so on. But the pain doesnt go away. I don’t think
my faith was changed, really. My belief in trying to help other people and
to do what I can to make the world better just goes right on.
65
J Lawrence Schiller
in November 1963, twenty-six-year-old Los Angeles photojournalist
Lawrence Schiller was on assignment for the Saturday Evening Post,
arriving in Dallas on the press flight in time to photograph Lee Harvey
Oswald after his arrest. He later landed Jack Ruby’s final interview. He
became close with the Rubenstein family, as well as the family of Lee
Oswald. Marina and her children vacationed with him in California a
number of times. He later produced The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald
and other feature films. For many years Schiller was Norman Mailer’s
research associate, and he persuaded the KGB to release its volumi-
nous Oswald file to the duo for their book Oswald's Tale.
C- up as I did on the West Coast, I didn’t have a sense of East-
ern politics. The first time that I really got into politics was when, as
a photographer, I was asked to photograph Eisenhower as president. Then
I became really aware of the political system. Of course when I read Nor-
man Mailer’s piece, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” I became
aware of John F. Kennedy.
I was very young, in my twenties, when John F. Kennedy was elected
president. I’m a kid coming out from the surf of La Jolla, California. I
remember the first images I saw of him with these crowds and his hands
out. Then reading that he was Catholic, 1 said, “He’s the pope who came
off the wall and got in the gutter with the rest of the sinners.” He was so
lovable, he was so likable. I couldn't find a flaw in him, looking or hearing
him or even feeling him. He was young. He was almost like an athlete in
some ways. I didn’t know he had back problems and things like that, but
he seemed almost like a gazelle in the wild. He didnt look like Eisen-
hower. As years went on, I photographed many of the Kennedys. They
66
LAWRENCE SCHILLER
understood grassroots like nobody else did. Ihey understood that they
had to communicate with the people.
~~ ie
I was taking a shower in my
home in California when my wife
ran in and said, “It’s on the radio
that they think somebody's shot
John F. Kennedy.” I jumped out of
the shower, took the third drawer
of the dresser, flipped it over into
the suitcase, and grabbed my
cameras—I was one of five staff
photographers for the Saturday
Evening Post at that time. I didn't
even say a word to Judy. I got in
the car and drove directly to LAX
airport. I didn’t even call the
magazine or anything. I arrived at the airport, and of course it was just
inundated by the media. I didn’t realize at the time that Los Angeles was
the closest media center to Dallas. Chicago was farther away, and there
was nothing in Atlanta in those days. I remember the rush to get on an
American Airlines flight. Only when we were in the air did the pilot
inform everybody that John F. Kennedy had died.
I was thinking as a journalist and understanding the magnitude. I can't
say that Lincoln's assassination came into my mind, but I remember seeing
an incredible image out of Japan of a politician being assassinated, stabbed
in the back, just months before. Another event in my life a month before
went through me. It was chills, because I had flown to Rome with Madame
Nhu and hid out with her and her husband, Ngo Dinh Nhu. His brother
had been assassinated. Many people thought the CIA was involved in that
assassination in Vietnam, and the first thought that went through my mind
was: Is the death of Kennedy linked to the assassination one month before?
The first thing you do when you go into a strange city is try to find
somebody who knows that city inside out. The first thing I do when I go
67
WHERE WERE YOU?
into a small town is I hire
[jumped out of the shower, took ° taxicab driver 24/7. l
; l went immediately to the
the third drawer of the dresser, — Dallas police station and
flipped it over into the suitcase, asked, “Where do the
cops hang out?” They
told me the third floor.
I went up to the third
floor and said, “Is there
anybody off-duty here who wants to be hired?” Believe it or not, I was
and grabbed my cameras.
able to hire an off-duty police officer who worked for me for three days.
Marina Oswald’s first contact with the media—I believe after she was
interrogated by the police and Secret Service—was with Richard Stolley at
Life magazine, a very fine editor. But as time went on, the Saturday Evening
Post was looking to buy rights. At the same time, I was deeply involved in
looking into Jack Ruby, the man who killed Lee Harvey Oswald. Through
Earl Ruby, his brother, and Eva Grant, his sister, I started to get to know
everybody. One day, quite honestly, I just called Marina Oswald up and
said, “I’m Larry Schiller from the Saturday Evening Post, Vd like to come
out and see you. I want to introduce myself to you.”
Years later, she came to California and vacationed with me and my
second wife. She even wrote very personal letters about whether she
should get a divorce from Mr. Porter and remarry. As time went on, Nor-
man Mailer and I decided to do a book, Oswald’ Tale, about the years
Lee Harvey Oswald spent in the Soviet Union. It was very important that
Marina introduce us to certain people, which she did. Mailer and | spent
five days interviewing her in Dallas at an Embassy Suites hotel. She had,
like a pendulum, been moving back and forth. At first she was thoroughly
convinced that her husband had done it, but as time went on she moved
in the opposite direction, that he was part of a conspiracy. Where her
head is at today, I dont know.
Marina screamed and hollered at me, telling me I was worse than the
Secret Service, that my interrogation of her in Dallas for those five days
68
LAWRENCE SCHILLER
was horrible; I should be ashamed of myself. I said, “The difference is, I
know more about you now, thirty years later, than they knew eighteen
hours after.” She was very upset that we knew that much about every
aspect of her life. Mailer and I had spent an entire year and interviewed
114 people in the Soviet Union. We had followed people who emigrated
all over the world—into Argentina, into Chicago. The people who lived
above Marina and Lee moved to Chicago, and we went and saw them.
She was furious that we knew so much about her life in Leningrad and
how she had been sent into internal exile in Belarus.
What Norman and I discovered after a year working in Minsk,
Belarus, was that there was no connection between Oswald and the KGB.
They didn’t try to turn him. ‘They thought, as a defector, he was a new
channel into the Soviet Union. When he came back, he did get involved
with some White Russians.
Pll say one thing: If Lee Harvey Oswald had succeeded in killing
General Walker, which he attempted prior to shooting Kennedy, I think
John F. Kennedy would be alive today. Oswald was looking for acknowl-
edgment, a certain gratification, a certain sense of accomplishment, which
he didn’t seem to have in his life. This is evident from the investigation
Mailer and I did for over a year in the Soviet Union and the access we had
to the KGB files. When Oswald came back to the United States, that’s
what was driving him. He needed to be accepted. He needed a sense of
accomplishment.
I don't know specifically what might have motivated him to take
a shot at General Walker, but Walker was very right wing, completely
on the opposite side of where John F. Kennedy was. Marina Oswald
described to me in a detailed interview how her husband sat on the porch
of their house at that time, on the second floor, with the gun, the same
Mannlicher-Carcano, propped up in the corner, listening to the radio for
news that Walker had been killed or Walker had been shot. He became
more and more depressed when there was nothing on the news. They
kept it very quiet. In fact, the bullet missed Walker by something like six
inches. He missed Walker, and he went into a tremendous depression.
Sad to say, if Walker's life had been taken, John F. Kennedy, in my opin-
ion, would still be alive.
69
WHERE WERE You?
Oswald was alone assassin. The psychological profile that Mailer and
I developed during our year in the Soviet Union told us that. Mailer went
to the Soviet Union thoroughly convinced that Oswald was part of a con-
spiracy, and Mailer came back saying that he had done it alone. We wrote
Oswald’s Tale because we were looking for a pattern in the Soviet Union
with his relationship with Marina, his wife, and other people. What were
the triggers that got him upset? What were the triggers in the Soviet
Union? Could you take that pattern, that grid, and place it in Dallas at the
time of Kennedy? Could you find the same triggers? One of the triggers
that would get him upset in Minsk was his wife saying, “Get your dirty
feet off the pillow”; he'd get furious. We know he went crazy over things
like that because all of that was bugged by the KGB; we had access to
those transcripts.
But we couldn't find anything that was outside of a sense of accom-
plishment. One of the biggest mysteries was that Marina had had rela-
tionships with other men before marrying Lee Harvey Oswald, but when
he walked into the radio factory he brought in a piece of sheet with blood
on it in—a Russian tradition—and walked around, showing that his wife
was a virgin. We were looking at all of those events to see what was inside
this man’s head. In the end result, he just wanted to be accepted, and he
wanted to accomplish something that nobody else had accomplished.
In the United States, Marina was a fish out of water. She didnt know
what to do. The interrogations by government sources were beyond her
comprehension. I just think she was afraid to move. She had two children. _
She was a woman without any resources. She had left the Soviet Union
and had no connections here. Her Aunt Valya, who was still living in
Minsk at that time, eventually came to the United States to live with her
for a short period of time. The friends she did make werent going to give
her enough security to walk away from Lee Harvey Oswald.
~~ —
There are many questions that have no answers, but that doesn’t mean
somebody’s withholding an answer. We have to accept that fact. Any
two people can come up with different things that I'd like to know. Yes,
there are things that I would like to know about Lee Harvey Oswald. The
7O
LAWRENCE SCHILLER
night before the assassination, really, his leaving the wedding ring when
he leaves the house that morning? Marina still cant explain that. There
are things about Oswald we'll never know. But the effect of what he did
will never leave us.
Mark Lane and Edward J. Epstein, in their own ways, had a certain
amount of credibility because they made us think about the subject in a
certain manner; the general public wasn't being pointed in that direction.
The Warren Report, whether it was under the influence of Lyndon John-
son, certainly was pointing America in a certain direction. Mark Lane,
whether you agree or disagree with his tactics, was very important. He
made us reevaluate it. Edward J. Epstein, who was just a graduate student,
wrote a book called Inquest that made us look at the details as we hadnt
before. [hose two men and people like Penn Jones, Sylvia Meagher, and
others who were critics of the Warren Report all had their place. The
dialogue was very good for America. We should be forced to question
and look at things and not accept the status quo. Whether in time one of
these people or more than one of them will prove to be more correct than
we think they are now, I dont know. But I still believe that Oswald pulled
the trigger alone. l
I was on the second floor of the Dallas police station. I have a lot of
pictures, including historic pictures of that gun. Oswald enjoyed being
run up and down the hall. Oswald looked at that 16mm movie camera;
he looked at that television camera at the end of the hall and smiled. He
enjoyed those moments. I remember arriving at the police station, and my
contact sheets show that he was run up and down the hall at least four
times while I was there. Then you have Jack Ruby, who we later found out
was all around there. He’s even in the corner of one of my pictures in the
basement. The access was quite different than what we have today.
Jack Ruby was a nebbish. Many things say to me that he was not
part of a conspiracy: his waiting
in line at the Western Union
station and not knowing how
Oswald enjoyed being run
long the people in front of
him are going to take to send a up and down the hall.
money-gram, nobody knowing
WHERE WERE You?
exactly when Oswald’s being
brought down. They take his
belt off, or they put his belt
on. There were things that
delayed his transfer. The
meeting of these two men
was, I think, just fate. Ruby
at that moment wanted to be
a star. He’s always wanted to
be a star.
I knew Jim Garrison. I
photographed him in Las
Vegas with his Mafia con-
nection and so forth. Clay
Shaw wasn't involved. I know
exactly where Clay Shaw was. He was in San Francisco on a cruise boat.
I was deeply involved in all the facts. Garrison, I think, was a little too
much off base. Oliver Stone is a great filmmaker. He’s a friend of mine.
He was at a benefit I had last year and gave a wonderful speech. He makes
us think about things we should. I’m not saying we have to accept them,
but I think he’s a great filmmaker.
~~ aie
John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy—I didn't know the other brother
[Teddy] at all—were two men who really related to everybody, and emo-
tionally they were great men. At age seventy-six, I look back at those two
men, both lives taken by people who had no idea of the effect of what they
were going to do. Their acts were selfish. We were deprived, maybe not of
a great president, but of an experience with John F. Kennedy, and America
was deprived of an experience with Robert Kennedy. I had no compre-
hension at all of the magnitude of how it would affect me emotionally in
years to come, and how it would change the course of American history.
Two hundred years from now, will we still be talking about this in
the same way? Probably not. We talk about Lincoln so many years later
because Lincoln changed the course of American history. I dont think
72
LAWRENCE SCHILLER
John F. Kennedy’s presidency changed the course of American history. I
don't think we'll be talking about it in the same way, but I think it’s good
that we address the issues while we still have memories of it.
I don't think about it every day, but it never leaves me. I always see an
image, I always see something that reflects back into those years of the
Kennedys. They were exciting years for young people. They gave us a view
of what could be achieved and what should be achieved. And they gave us
a view that anybody can obtain it.
73
Oleg Kalugin
in 1963 twenty-nine-year-old Oleg Kalugin was operating undercover
in New York as chief of KGB operations in the United States. He was
later assigned to Washington, DC, with a cover as deputy press officer
for the Soviet Embassy, where he became one of the KGB's top officers,
playing a major role in the John Walker spy ring. As a result, he was
promoted to general in 1974, the youngest in the institution’s history.
He returned to KGB headquarters to head the foreign counterintelli-
gence of the First Chief Directorate. He was also an elected member of
the Soviet parliament during Gorbachev's administration and was one
of the first reformers of the KGB. Gorbachev signed a decree in 1990
stripping Kalugin of his rank, decorations, and pension, and he went
into exile in the United States. In 1995 he accepted a teaching posi-
tion at the Catholic University of America and has remained in America
ever since, becoming a naturalized citizen in 2003 and writing a book
about Cold War espionage that was published in 2008. He now works —
for the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies and sits on
the advisory board for the International Spy Museum.
Tt largest number of Soviet sources inside any Western country was
in the United States. I will give you some statistics, which are not
classified anymore but not known generally. In 1953 the Soviets super-
vised nearly three hundred assets in the United States. The US intelli-
gence services did not have a single one in the USSR, so the score was
three hundred to zero until, I believe, May of 53, when a Russian lieuten-
ant colonel from military intelligence who was stationed in Austria was
acquired by the United States. In 1960, when John F. Kennedy ran for
[es
OLEG KALUGIN
president, then 1961, the Soviets
had about thirty-five Americans
working for them. Kennedy had
every right at that time to be
suspicious—the Soviets were
trying to spread this gospel of
Communism across the world.
We succeeded more or less in
parts of Europe, but only because
of the Soviet military.
Castro came to power with-
out Soviet support. Ihat was a
self-made revolution. Putting
the missiles in Cuba was part
of Soviet solidarity with pro-
Communist reformers who
would inevitably at some point be allies of the USSR. Once Fidel revealed
that he was also leaning toward Communist ways of thinking and solu-
tions, the Soviets immediately took advantage and brought intermediate-
range missiles to Cuba. That was one of the first Soviet gestures of trust
to Cuban leadership. Second, it was a reminder to the United States that
they better not try again, or the Bay of Pigs would be just a tale of humor.
You will meet a serious challenge, and our missiles are just a matter of fact
you have to face.
I lived in and worked in the United States at the time, and as it [the
Cuban Missile Crisis] played out, I thought that common sense would
prevail on both sides. I knew the Kennedy administration, as I saw it
from my Russian standpoint, as reasonable enough, and though I knew
Khrushchev was a very emotional guy, he would also stop at some point,
somewhere. That’s exactly what happened.
It would be a nuclear war, and both sides understood that a nuclear
war would mean no victory for anyone. It would be the end of humanity
perhaps. I had been watching all these developments from an early age,
and now fortunately the United States and Russia have found a way to
live together despite differences, and there is no threat of war between the
75
WHERE WERE You?
two countries. But the fear has moved to the Middle East—Iran, Isracl
that complex world. Itis truly something we have to be fearful about and
try whatever we can to stop a confrontation.
Actually I think ’'m worried now more than in the old days because I
was a representative of a great nation that suffered so much from war. We
lost, according to the latest statement made by President Putin, twenty-
six million people. I knew other figures, but that’s the latest: twenty-six
million people. That was in World War II, and a nuclear war would be
total destruction of the world. The stress internationally and militarily
have moved down south. If that confrontation takes place, it will truly be
not the end of humanity but something terrible. In my own way, as much
as I can, I’m trying to state that we have to find ways to get rid of that
threat to the world.
When Kennedy was elected, I was stationed in the United States as a
Radio Moscow correspondent at the United Nations as my KGB cover.
I was even elected vice president of the Correspondents Association at
the United Nations. That was a great honor. I was young man and in
New York City, and then I appeared in the New York Times when I was a
Fulbright scholar in 59.
I thought highly of Kennedy. I thought he was a likable personality, a
shrewd man, attractive. The Bay of Pigs, his unsuccessful attempt to over-
throw Castro, in many ways ruined his reputation. I was involved in the —
post—Bay of Pigs events as a Radio Moscow correspondent, undercover.
I traveled to Florida with my colleague from the KGB. He worked for
TASS News Agency as his cover. We both traveled to the Miami area and
‘came to the headquarters of the Cuban émigre anti-Castro organization.
We introduced ourselves as members of NATO countries. | said I was
from Norway, and my colleague, Armenian by birth, said he was from
Turkey. We said to the Cuban senior émigré that we officials in NATO
and in Europe were disgusted with the lack of action against the Castro
regime.
What happened? They were a little shocked by our honest statements,
but one of them, the leader of that Cuban émigré organization, said,
76
OLEG KALUGIN
“Listen, we would do it at any moment. We are ready, but those guys in
the White House would not let us do it.” For us it was crucial information,
which we reported back to Moscow immediately. The Cuban émigrés are
willing. They’re ready, anxious to, but the White House, the government
of the United States, would not support them in another military venture
against Cuba. That was our report to Moscow. That’s when I thought
of Kennedy much better, because he understood that another invasion
might lead to a major confrontation with the Soviet Union.
My superiors in Moscow, they liked Kennedy, as a matter of fact. He
was a personable man, an individual who was liked by many people, and
he was a smart man, unlike some of his predecessors. He would play the
rules of the Cold War in a gentler way. That’s why he was viewed as a guy
we could make a deal with. Khrushchev was very tough on him, and Ken-
nedy was the first to admit that. Khrushchev by nature was that kind of a
man. He was rough and tough and rude to many people in power, and that
was what eventually led to his early political demise. He was practically
thrown out of power in’64 because he insulted so many people. He just
didn't deal correctly with the military or with the security services. In fact,
Khrushchev made a historic speech at the Communist Party Twentieth
Congress, his secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes. In my view—and
Im sure the view maintained by millions of people around the world and
in Russia—that was the end of the illusion about Communism. I was an
ardent, dedicated Communist, but after Khrushchev’s speech I realized
that you cannot build the future of humanity on the corpses of millions of
people. That was what Khrushchev revealed in his anti-Stalinist speech,
talking about the crimes committed by Stalin.
The Russians would not abandon Cuba. It was a matter of Russian
ideology, national pride, and military strategic interest. The US govern-
ment had its own agenda, also understandable, regarding a Communist
state just ninety miles away from the United States. That was also difficult
to swallow. During the Cold War, the Soviet expansion westward, with
the occupation of part of Europe after World War II, was a constant
reminder that the Soviet expansion may go further, and Cuba was a spe-
cific example. The Soviets tried to take advantage of events in Argen-
tina and Chile, but they failed in the long run. ‘The Soviets were sort
i
WHERE WERE YOU?
of internationalist in the sense of spreading their ideals of Communism,
not in theory but in practice, and supporting all sorts of revolutionary
moments that in one way or another were in line with the Soviet foreign
and ideological policies.
I was in New York at that time representing Radio Moscow; that was my
KGB cover. When I heard that Kennedy had been assassinated, I was ter-
rified. My immediate reaction was that there would definitely be a public
linkage of Lee Harvey Oswald to Russia, and Russia would be figured
as a country that may have been involved. I had learned very quickly—
because Moscow headquarters was very quick in providing us with the
information—that Lee Harvey Oswald indeed had been in Russia. As
an American, Oswald was viewed as a potential recruit for the Russian
Security and Intelligence, and they planted a lady who would work with
him, trying eventually to make him a resource for Soviet intelligence and
counterintelligence. At some point the Russians understood that he was a
misfit. He was not a guy who would be useful. Our view was, in fact, bet-
ter get rid of him. When Oswald left with his Russian wife, the Russians
were happy to get rid of him. That’s how it happened.
Marina was planted just to find information. The Russians always
suspect that every foreigner, particularly Americans coming on diplo-
matic missions or otherwise, does some work for the CIA or whatever.
Everyone was a suspect. Later the KGB made a deal with her that if she -
came here to the United States—she was recruited; let’s put it that way.
But she didn’t perform the mission. She was actually thrown out of the
Russian network of sources—totally useless.
The Russian version is that the right-wing forces of the United States
were behind the assassination. That’s it. But Oswald was kind of a mis-
fit. It reminds me of the more recent
case in Boston, the two Chechens, the
Tsarnaevs.
, On that same day in 1963, we
lets put it that Way. received a cable from KGB headquar-
ters: “Meet as many Americans as you
She was recruited;
78
OLeEG KALUGIN
can, official, unofficial,
whomever. Tell them
we are very sorry. Rus-
sia liked Kennedy. We
do not stand behind
anything. We are with
the American people
and give condolences.”
We tried to impress
the Americans because
there were some sto-
Teo la tact there was a
story made up in Russia
by our special Active Measures Department that behind the assassina-
tion was the right-wing circles of the United States—those who hated
Kennedy for his progressive, forward-looking, democratic way of solv-
ing things. ‘These are the guys, the neo-fascists; they killed him. That's
when the Soviet propaganda centered on right-wing society, whatever
they were called at that time. Some of the guys from federal agencies like
the CIA and DIA were also unhappy with President Kennedy, so that
was a part of the Soviet propaganda campaign to convince the world that
the American right-wing forces were behind the murder of President
Kennedy. .
I knew that, and I understood at that time that Oswald acted on his
own. It was not a Soviet move, not at all. He was just a psychiatric case,
someone who reminds me of the Boston tragedy with the Tsarnaev broth-
ers from Dagestan. ‘The
Soviets would do their best
i dissociate themselves 4s an American, Oswald was
rom Oswald and just call
him what they thought he viewed as a potential recruit
was. When he was killed, I
think the Soviets even felt ;
relieved that they didn't Intelligence.
have to now prove anything
for the Russian Security and
Vo
WHERE WERE YOU?
because the guy was no longer in
Oswald acted on his own. this world. That was a solution,
sort of.
It was nota Soviet move. The Soviets were somewhat
concerned, because Kennedy was
known to be a reasonable guy,
an intelligent guy. But Johnson was an unknown, and the Russians were
somewhat fearful. Who knew what would come next? Maybe there would
be another attempt, another Bay of Pigs, only more successful.
Any new president in the United States was viewed with fear, suspi-
cion, and distrust in old Soviet Russia. Thank God, things changed since
then. The Cold War is over, and the current Russian regime looks at what
has been going on in the United States in a more realistic way, not tainted
by ideology. It’s Russian national pride, Russian national interest, eco-
nomics; that’s okay. But that mentality of spreading Communism around
the world is no more. It’s all over.
80
Darwin Payne
A newspaper reporter for the Fort Worth Press and the Dallas Times
Herald, Darwin Payne, then age twenty-six, also reported and did com-
mentary for Newsroom, the groundbreaking public television news
show on KERA-TV. He taught journalism at Southern Methodist Univer-
sity for thirty years and is recognized as one of the foremost scholars
of Dallas history. Payne was at the Fort Worth Press city desk rewriting
a story on Jackie Kennedy when word of the shots came.
he political climate in Dallas was very toxic; it was very tense. Ihe
extreme right-wing elements had been very active before, and there
was a lot of work on preparing for the Kennedy visit because most people
thought something might happen. They were very concerned about that.
There was a terrific publicity campaign to ensure that he had a good visit
and that the people received him with cordiality and support. _
No one anticipated someone taking a shot at Kennedy, but they did
anticipate a disturbance of some kind. In fact, the City Council the week
before had passed an ordinance making it illegal to disturb a public meet-
ing, because that had been done during the Adlai Stevenson visit just a
month before. A terrific struggle had taken place between the right-wing
elements and the supporters of Stevenson and the United Nations. It
happened when LBJ came in 1960 cam-
paigning as vice president under Ken-
nedy. He was mobbed at the Adolphus Most people thought
Hotel, and Dak really concerned OM hing mig ht
about what might happen.
Fort Worth didnt have the toxic happe n.
climate Dallas had at the time, and we ———————
WHERE WERE YOU?
knew that Kennedy’s reception in Fort
Worth was just a very brief appear-
ance after spending the night at the
Texas Hotel. The main visit was in
Dallas. There were rifts in the Texas
Democratic Party at that time. Sena-
tor Yarborough was a liberal Demo-
crat; Lyndon Johnson was identified
as a conservative Democrat, and Yar-
borough was very angry with John-
son. Yarborough refused to ride in
the car with Johnson, and Kennedy
ordered him to take part in the parade
motorcade.
=i o
My assignment that day was to be on the rewrite desk. I was to take story
notes from a reporter on the scene at Love Field and a reporter at the
Trade Mart. They were going to talk about Jackie Kennedy and how she
looked, the crowd’s reaction, all of her reactions as well. I was to piece
together that story for our afternoon paper, and we were past deadline.
Deadline for an afternoon paper was 11:30—and he arrived of course
at about 12:30-—so we were holding up the paper, and there was a lot of
pressure to get a lot of material in that late edition story.
I was at a typewriter in the city room in the Times Herald office,
which was about five blocks from the School Book Depository. We had a
police reporter who was monitoring the police radio, and that was being
relayed to our city editor. We were all sitting around our desks, doing
whatever we were supposed to do at the time, and the city editor suddenly
said, “He’s been hit! They're sending code three—homicide detectives to
School Book Depository.” l
“Hes been hit with what?” I asked. I was thinking he might have
been hit with a sign, as Adlai Stevenson had been hit with a sign the
month before, but they didn’t know for sure. ‘Ihe city editor asked me
and another reporter to run down to the School Book Depository to see
82
Darwin PAYNE
what was happening there, so the other reporter, Pyle Rosenfield, and
I took off. I saw bedlam there. There were police officers with rifles, a
fire truck, spectators who were in shock. I started interviewing people,
trying to determine what had happened and trying to find eyewitnesses
to it.
I was operating on one track, as a journalist. Luckily I was a jour-
nalist—because if I hadn't been, I would have been totally devastated. I
would have been unable to do anything. But I sincerely felt a duty to get
to the truth of the story, so I worked very hard. I was thinking of it, as
everyone was, as a historic moment, that we really had to do a good job
on getting information.
I thought the right-wing elements that had been so dominant in the
city for so long had been guilty of the assassination. I anticipated that they
were holed up in the School Book Depository and that I and the rest of
us would ultimately see a shootout or something like that. I thought they
would be up on that sixth floor and soon surrounded by police. That of
course didn't happen.
None of the eyewitnesses had seen the assassin, Oswald, and they
generally had the same description: Most of them thought the shots came
from the School Book Depository. Some were uncertain. They weren't
positive about how many shots were fired, but a number of them said
three, and I thought their stories were quite reasonable. They didn't men-
tion an individual firing shots from the “grassy knoll,” but there were
some who thought that the shots might have come from that area.
~~ ae
I found out about Zapruder by interviewing eyewitnesses. He was a gar-
ment manufacturer who had the building next door to the School Book
Depository, and they said, “Our boss has pictures of it. He was taking
moving pictures.” In his office, Zapruder had the television going. It was
giving all the news accounts about the shots being fired at the president.
It was being said that Kennedy was wounded, perhaps fatally. He was very
much upset over what he had seen. He was in tears much of the time,
very distraught. Zapruder said, “No, no, he’s dead. I know. I was watching
through my viewfinder, and I saw his head explode like a firecracker.” So
83
WHERE WERE YOU?
I assumed that Kennedy was
Zapruder said, “No, no, he’s dead at that moment. Shortly
thereafter, the news came that
dead. I know. Iwas watch- he was dead.
ing through my view- Zapruder’s film was on top
F of a filing cabinet in his office,
finder, and I saw his head
and I saw the camera there. |
explode like a firecracker.” was trying to get him to take
the film and the camera to the
Times Herald, assuring him
that we would have it devel-
oped to see if it was as good as he thought it was. The random thought
occurred of course that, Heck, I could grab that camera and take off. Obvi-
ously, I wasn't going to do that, but I did call the publisher of the Times
Herald—Id never met him—and told him what I had and suggested that
he send a car down to the School Book Depository with the words DALLAS
Times Hera.p on the side to assure Zapruder that we would take care of
him and the film. But Zapruder didn't want to do that. He wanted to turn
it over to the FBI and/or Secret Service, which ultimately he did.
While I was there, they came in. They had with them Harry McCor-
mick, the legendary police reporter for the Dallas Morning News, and they
all went into an office with Zapruder. I started following them in because
I wanted to be there myself, and they said, “No, no, who are you?” I told
them. They said, “You can't be here,” and I said, “Here is Harry McCor- ~
mick of the opposition. If he’s there, I have to be there.” So they kicked
McCormick out and then took off with the film to have it developed.
I saved the notebook that I had when I went to the School Book
Depository on November 22 and used to take notes while interviewing
eyewitnesses and Abraham Zapruder. I’ve treasured it since that time. It’s
the only notebook | saved from all my reporting days. It’s in pencil. These
are notes I took when I went up to Zapruder’s office afterward. They were
quite sketchy. I’m not terribly proud of them, but they’re original.
“I got film,” he said. “I saw it hit him in the head. They were going so
fast. He slumped over with the first shot. With the first shot, he bent
84
Darwin PAYNE
over and grabbed his neck as he sort of did. The second burst hit him in
the head. It opened up. Couldn't be alive.
Jackie was beside him. After the last shot, she crawled over the
back of the car.”
Then I got his name, “Zapruder, Abraham, president.”
This is from another eyewitness.
“We saw the president making it under the triple underpass. We heard
something that sounded like a truck backfired or a firecracker. Saw the
president slump forward. And we thought he was ducking. A lot of peo-
ple hit the dirt. ‘The president’ car hesitated for a moment, then lurched
forward. A lot of people hit the ground. Then, a lot of confusion. I didnt
know what happened. Couldnt pick up anything on the radio. When
we heard the president was hit on the radio, the police arrived.”
I went back after that to the School Book Depository. I was able to go
up on the sixth floor and look out the window, see the sniper’s lair where
the boxes were arranged. Then I went back to the office. It was getting
late in the afternoon, and the city editor told me, “Here’s an address, 1025
North Beckley. This is where Oswald lived. Go there, and see what you
can find.” It wasn't far away, just over the viaduct in Oak Cliff
I didn't hear Oswald’s name at the School Book Depository; I heard
it when I got to the office. It had been revealed that he had shot the police
officer, Tippit, and that he’d been a defector to the Soviet Union before.
So we knew quite a bit about him by the middle of the afternoon. When
the officer was shot, there were other reporters there from the Times Her-
ald. We had a little confab because an officer had been shot over in Oak
Cliff. Maybe some of us should go. I didn’t want to go over to Oak Cliff
because I thought the assassin or assassins were still in the School Book
Depository building. I wanted to stay and see what happened there. Oth-
ers thought the shooting had a connection to the assassination. They took
off for the Texas Theatre and saw Oswald captured, but I missed that
opportunity because I was intent on seeing what happened at the School
Book Depository.
85
WHERE WERE YOU?
Saturday night I was at the police station on my normal beat as the Sat-
urday night police reporter, I stayed up very late there. Sunday morning
I slept late but got up in time to see Ruby shoot Oswald. I went to the
newspaper again, did some work there, and then went to Ruby's apart-
ment in Oak Cliff and interviewed people there. Td never heard Ruby’s
name, but many other reporters did know of him. The other reporters
thought that Jack Ruby was sort of a tough character, owning those night
clubs. He was a police buff. The things we generally now know about
him, they confirmed right at that moment. They understood him for
what he was: somebody who liked to hang around the police department,
give passes to his Carousel Club, and try to ingratiate himself with the
police.
The police had guards set outside the driveway into the police base-
ment who supposedly werent going to let anybody in. But the crowd that
Sunday consisted mainly of plainclothes detectives, police officers, and
some reporters. The Warren Commission report later said that a mob of
reporters had permitted Ruby to conceal himself, but he was standing
next to police officers who knew who he was.
< ie
Dallas was very protective of itself on Monday morning. We were receiv-
ing an awful lot of criticism from around the world and throughout the
nation, and that seemed to be acceptable because, after all, it was a hor-
rible thing. But when you had people from Dallas saying that perhaps
the climate we had here had something to do with it—the awful political
climate, the extremist demonstrations and assaults they'd made on people
like Stevenson and Johnson—those people came under serious immedi-
ate attack from the leaders of Dallas. They portrayed them as traitors to
Dallas when they should have been defending the city.
That was the first reaction. A little bit later, the city leaders moder-
ated. The Birch Society and the extreme right wing did nothing, and a
sense of moderation took over. People like Stanley Marcus ran an adver-
tisement in the Dallas Morning News called “What’s Right with Dallas,”
86
Darwin PAYNE
which really was an ad saying what had been wrong with Dallas. He was
clever in giving it that title. He talked about some of the positive things
in Dallas, but he also pointed out what we needed to do to have a toler-
ance for other viewpoints, to be more mindful of minorities and that sort
of thing. That helped turn the tide; we started realizing that we needed to
start accepting all viewpoints.
The mayor of Dallas was Earl Cabell. He resigned that office to run
against the Republican congressman, Bruce Alger, who had been a leader
of the right-wing forces in Dallas, and defeated Alger by a huge majority.
Of our delegation in Austin for the Texas legislature, eight out of nine of
those members were right-wing Republicans. Democrats swept the field
against them that fall, and all the Republicans were defeated. You had
that sort of political change happening in Dallas.
The relationship between Dallas and Fort Worth changed, which was
a very important thing. The new mayor we had was Eric Johnson, who'd
been one of the founders of Texas Instruments. Dallas and Fort Worth
were under a directive to find an airport—midway between us—or they
would find it for the two cities. Johnson, the new mayor, said, “We've
fought it long enough.” He was alone in this among the Dallas leaders at
the time. He was strong enough, though, and he persuaded them, “We've
got to cooperate now.” That’s how he led the move to get Dallas and Fort
Worth to agree on a mid-cities airport, and he became chairman of the
airport board for the next eight years. Through the force of his personality,
he was able to persuade all the people who were working on the project
to build an extra-large airport. [hey were thinking of an airport of maybe
six thousand acres or so; he went up to eighteen thousand acres. [hat was
a terrific economic engine for the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The city got a new federal building, which Bruce Alger had opposed.
The establishment very much wanted a federal building here, and they got
it. [hey got a new city hall designed by I. M. Pei, which was a spectacular
building. All of that came about because Eric Johnson was mayor.
By and large, I believe that the city today has forgotten about the
assassination. But as the fiftieth anniversary approaches, city leaders have
become very mindful of it and have made very careful plans to have some
sort of observance that’s respectful and proper.
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WHERE WERE YOU?
The Dallas Cowboys
were an important factor
in making the nation and
the world forget about the
assassination when they
thought of Dallas. They
started thinking about the
Cowboys, who were on TV
all the time in the late 60s
with some great success.
Another program started
about that time, the TV
show Dallas. [Note: Dal-
las began airing in 1978.|
Those took some negative attention away from Dallas. Perhaps more
important in taking away the city’s opprobrium was the fact that two
other cities experienced assassinations in 1968—Los Angeles with Rob-
ert Kennedy, and Memphis with the assassination of Martin Luther King
Jr. Were we going to blame those cities for what happened there? Could
we forgive Dallas now? I think that attitude prevailed.
The assassination ushered in this great period of uneasiness, of
upheaval, including the disturbances of the’60s and the civil rights move-
ment. It made the youth disparage the establishment. What could they
believe in if our president could be assassinated by an individual like that?
It was a period of disillusionment. It shaped the 60s and the ’70s. Indi-
rectly it led to positive things. There was a change in the nation’s tenor, the
sense that we've got to do better. Idealism arose among the youth, who
started protesting and demanding certain things.
The civil rights movement picked up. LBJ became president with the
goal of realizing the ideals of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which hadnt gone
very far, but LBJ carried them nearly to completion. Those sorts of things
happened as a result of the assassination. LBJ did a wonderful job as pres-
ident. He got a lot of legislation passed. The 1964 Civil Rights Act and
the 1965 Voting Act really liberated the African-American population to
be able to participate in the American system.
88
Darwin PAYNE
I had always approved of Kennedy, as he was the first president I
voted for. I thought the world of him. I thought he was a terrific presi-
dent, and I was very distraught at the time of the assassination. I remem-
ber being in Zapruder’s office, looking out the window, seeing the School
Book Depository, the crowds out there, and thinking, Its a good thing Im
working as a reporter; otherwise, I dont know how I could go on. It was really
very distressing, but I did have things to do, and that kept me occupied
that day. I was lucky to have that.
89
PART TWO
SOLEMNITIES
Joseph Califano
A thirty-two-year-old New York attorney in 1963, Joseph Califano was
working as Pentagon general counsel. He went on to become special
assistant to President Johnson and secretary of health, education, and
welfare under President Carter before founding the National Center on
Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
was in the bottom of a dam in West Virginia. I was general counsel to
the Army and was also responsible for all the civil works of the Army,
and that’s where I was. Somebody from the Army shouted down, literally
shouted down, so I came up out of the dam, and he said, “The president’s
Gead.
I said, “Take me back to the Pentagon.”
When I got to the Pentagon, I first went right to Cy Vance, who was
secretary of the Army, and said to him, “I’m going to leave and go back to
New York. This is the best of my generation, and that’s why I came down
here.”
Vance said, “No, stay here. You don’t know Lyndon Johnson. ‘Things
are really going to move. This is a different kind of person.” Vance had
been Johnson’s counsel during the Missile Gap hearings that he held as
senator. “In any case, I have something for you to do.”
I asked, “What?”
He said, “Jacqueline Kennedy wants the president buried in Arling-
ton Cemetery.”
This is the same day, this is November 22. Jacqueline Kennedy wants
the president buried in Arlington Cemetery. “I want you to go over
tomorrow morning, meet Robert Kennedy over there, and pick the place.”
I was responsible for Arlington Cemetery because I wore another hat for
the Army.
I knew Bobby from the years I had been in the Pentagon, and Td
worked with him. He was going to pick out the burial site, but we were
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WHERE WERE You?
going to do it together. Į just
was overwhelmed, I ‘went
home. I had two young kids,
and my wife—I was just
in shock. I guess I was like
the rest of the country, but I
knew I had things to do.
The next morning I met
Robert Kennedy at Arling-
ton Cemetery. It was pour-
ing rain, pouring rain, and
we walked around that plot,
above the Lincoln Memo-
rial Bridge. I had a little map
of Arlington Cemetery, and
I marked out the 3.2 acres,
what turned out to be 3.2
acres, with him. He was
shattered. Pll never forget
the way .. . he was hollow
eyed. He looked like a truck had run over him and so different from the
Bobby Kennedy I had seen dealing with the problems in the South and
segregation. Ihen, almost in a whisper, he said, “This is where the presi-
dent will be buried.” Then he left, and I went back to the Pentagon.
When I was back in my office, I got a call from Secretary [Robert]
McNamara. He said, “I hear you picked the land,” so I assumed Bobby
had talked to him. “I want to make sure we own that land. I want you to
have a title search.”
I told Bob, “This is Arlington Cemetery.”
He said, “I want to make damn
sure this land is locked up and we
I was responsible for own it. Get a title search, and write an
; opinion.”
Arlington Cemetery. So I sent one of my lawyers and
Ramsey Clark, who was then the
Gát
JOSEPH CALIFANO
assistant attorney general for the Lands Division. They went over to the
Alexandria courthouse on Sunday. We had to get the courthouse open
because that’s where the records were. They did a title search. I came back
to my office, worked Sunday and Sunday night, and we wrote an opinion.
I prepared an order for the secretary of the Army to sign, setting aside
that land forever. I brought it to Cy Vance, and he okayed it.
Then McNamara called again and said, “Jacqueline Kennedy wants to
have a torch, a light, that will be eternal. I want you to go over there and
make sure we set that up.”
I said, “OK.” He and I went over there with an Army general, and we
plotted out roughly where the eternal light would be. We talked about
getting copper tubing to put the wires in, making sure it was deep enough
so that spiked heels didn't break it. I said this can never go out because
McNamara had told me, “Jacqueline never wants this to go out.”
McNamara said he wanted to sign the order. He had no authority
over Arlington or the Army at that point, so we came up with an approve
line for him. I went over later—either later Sunday afternoon or early
Monday morning, I cant remember which—and McNamara was in a car
parked at that side of the Lincoln Memorial Bridge. He had gone over to
make sure that the 3.2 acres, and where the grave would be set in there,
was going to be exactly in the center of the bridge as you came across. |
handed them the order, and he signed it. .
He was, I think, shaken. But he was an efficient machine in many
respects. He actually said to me: “] want you to make damn sure that a
wire is low enough so that some woman doesn‘ break it with her heels.”
I said, “Already done that.”
He said, “That’s a great job,” and then he said, “You stay around. We're
going to need people like you.”
~~
I was home that day [of the funeral]. I was like every other American; I
was watching every single thing that happened.
To see the burial site for the first time on television ... We were
really frozen in time, and this was sort of the greatest president—the only
president I'd ever known anything about in an intimate way. I'd read about
95
WHERE WERE You?
Roosevelt and Eisenhower like any other kid growing up, but it was just
fantastic. It was in`a sense one of the greatest things Td ever been part of.
The Army was terrific with stuff like this. They got it right—and remem-
ber: All the stone and all that stuff wasn’t all set at that point in time. I
went back there when Robert Kennedy was killed.
I was working for President Johnson, and we went over to the burial
site at night when he came down from New York on the train. That’s
probably the next time I saw it. At that point, I just never wanted to
go over there. I’ve seen it several times since then. You drive across that
bridge, and it’s fantastic. It’s great for the country. It’s not just great for
President Kennedy and his family and Jackie, but it's great for the country.
< ie
They were obsessed with getting rid of Castro. About a year after the Bay
of Pigs invasion failed, Robert Kennedy ransomed the Cuban brigade. I
was then still general counsel to the Army working for Vance, and the
Army was given responsibility for assimilating the Cuban brigade into
American life. We brought them into the Army, the Navy, and the Air
Force. We wouldn't let them fly planes because we didnt want a plane
going over Cuba.
President Kennedy created the Interdepartmental Coordinating
Committee for Cuban Affairs. It was nominally chaired by a State Depart-
ment fellow named Sterling Cottrell, but it was in fact chaired by Rob-
ert Kennedy. He ran that committee—and the object of that committee
was to overthrow the Castro regime. Vance was the committee’s Defense
Department member. He made me his alternate, and we planned, tried, to
do all kinds of things: putting sugar in the gasoline, putting bad bacteria
in. petroleum, sabotage, everything.
Robert Kennedy was constantly saying, “This is the most important
thing we've got to get done, we have to get rid of Castro.” Now, “get
rid of” in that committee meant to overthrow the Castro regime. But at
some point there was a discussion in the committee of assassinating Cas-
tro. A Justice Department lawyer named Joe Dolan, who was the Justice
Department alternate, and I argued against that. Throughout this discus-
sion, the CIA was totally silent.
96
JOSEPH CALIFANO
I began to say, “Ihere’s something else going on besides what were
actually doing in this committee.” Vance was very disturbed about what
he thought was an effort to assassinate Castro and almost resigned on
that issue.
We had a meeting before President Kennedy at one point. It was the
only time I was ever in a meeting with President Kennedy, Cy Vance, and
a Marine general named Brute Krulak, who was the tough counterinsur-
gency, dirty-tricks guy, and some State Department people, because we
disagreed.
We wanted to do much tougher things. We wanted to sabotage boats.
We wanted to blow up bridges. We wanted to send people in who were
trained by the CIA in sabotage. Ihe State Department wanted a much
meeker program of Latin American press and stuff like that. Vance laid
out our arguments. [he State Department laid out theirs. President Ken-
nedy read a paper we had given him and just got up and left. He said
nothing [except], “I'll be back.” Kenny O'Donnell came in about fifteen
minutes later and said, “Ihe meeting’s over—these kinds of disputes
should be solved by White House staffers, not by presidents.” Eventually
we got approval for most of the things we wanted to do in the Pentagon.
We got approval to send Cubans in to sabotage, to mess up the oil and
the petroleum.
They were crazy things. I mean, this was Keystone Kops, [ll give
you one example, which [’ll never forget. At one point the chief of Naval
Operations said, “One possibility is to fly over Cuba and drop an enor-
mous number of bats on Cuba with incendiary devices tied to them. The
bats will go down. They won't want to be out in the daytime. They'll go
into buildings all over. We’ll have the incendiary devices timed so that
they'll go off that night, and we'll have fires all over Cuba.” Rejected—not
because it was a crazy idea but because the planes would have to fly so
low; we were afraid Castro would knock one of them down and find out it
was an American plane. [he pressure was enormous to just do something,
do something.
Then the CIA representative Dick Helms and Desmond Fitzgerald,
who was their operations guy, said to me, “We would like you to identify
a number of Cuban generals, if you can from talking to your brigade
97
WHERE WERE You?
people, who are still there around Castro so that we can get a better sense
of what’s going on.”
But, as we now know and as we suspected, what they really were look-
ing for were generals who might kill Castro. Indeed, in a briefing they
gave the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Helms said, “We're looking at the possibil-
ity of doing this, and were studying what Hitler’s generals did to Hitler,
to see if there are any lessons there that we could use.” As we now know,
they had given people a poison pen. They had given them a sniper’s rifle
and everything in order to try and kill Castro. There’s no question in my
mind that that was the objective.
Reflecting over the years, I think the paroxysms, the overwhelming
grief, that Bobby Kennedy felt, that paralyzing grief ...a large part of
that was due to the fact that he suspected or worried—“worried” is prob-
ably the better word—that maybe the efforts to assassinate Castro had
resulted in his brother getting killed, that there was a Cuban connection.
Lyndon Johnson said to me and to other people, “Kennedy tried
to get Castro, but Castro got Kennedy first.” Remember, shortly before
Kennedy was assassinated, or within a few months, the president had
approved the coup in South Vietnam, which ended up in the killing of
[Ngo Dinh] Diem, the head of South Vietnam.
Castro told the Associated Press, I think in September of 1963, “If
the Americans think they can try and kill our leaders, their leaders arent
safe.” So we'll never know. I think we still don’t know the answer to that.
The Warren Commission never interviewed me, never interviewed Cy |
Vance, as far as I know, never interviewed anybody who was involved in
the Cuban coordinating committee. Why, I dont know.
The Warren Commission never interviewed me,
never interviewed Cy Vance, as far as I know,
never interviewed anybody who was involved in
the Cuban coordinating committee.
98
JosEPH CALIFANO
Johnson said he accepted the findings of the Warren Commission
at the time. Ihere’s no question about that. But he did say when I was
on the staff, and I think he may have told Walter Cronkite—he told
somebody at one point in an off-camera part of an interview—the same
thing: that Castro was involved. I remember something else. Shortly after
Johnson became president, I was still in the Pentagon. Johnson disbanded
the committee and ordered a stop to all this activity. I was sent around
the country to meet with various Cuban brigade units to tell them that
it was over. [here would be no more sabotage, there'd be nothing else;
there would never be another invasion of Cuba. ‘Their hope hadn't really
died yet, so that was quite a moving and difficult experience. But Johnson
stopped it all. By February of 64, all that activity was totally turned off.
I am persuaded that Oswald was working in concert with Castro's
people. I really am. I’m persuaded of that when I just put those pieces
together. We know Oswald went to Mexico, to the Cuban embassy there.
He said he was all for the Cubans. We know hed been to the Soviet
Union. When you just think about those events, and if you were Castro
and you saw Diem knocked off, you had to know we were trying to kill
you. I mean, there were too many crazy attempts to do that—and Castro's
little statement in September 1963 that “they're trying to kill me or our
leaders; their leaders are vulnerable too.”
I think someday there will be a final connection, but we may never
know until the Castros are out of power or until we have access to all their
files the way we have access to so many of the Soviet files. We learned so
much about what was going on between Soviet spies and the KGB and
the United States.
When I started doing my memoir, Inside: A Public and Private Life,
I went in to get as many documents as I could. I knew there had been a
meeting among Dick Helms, Fitzgerald, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
It was a meeting they wouldn't let me go to, even though I was Vance’s
alternate. It was a meeting at which Vance was not present. I used the
Freedom of Information Act to get the memorandum of that meeting.
That confirmed my suspicion, because that memorandum literally states
that the CIA people were looking at what Hitler’s generals had done to
Hitler to see if they could learn something from that vis-a-vis Castro. At
99
WHERE WERE You?
that point in time, I was having people interview Cuban military exiles
to see if they could identify Castro generals or top Castro military people
who might have access to him. It was clear to me, at least at that point,
that one of the things they were trying to do was maybe get the generals
to knock off Castro.
The day Kennedy was assassinated, the CIA had a guy in Paris meet-
ing with a man I think was nicknamed AM/LASH who was asking for
a sniper’s rifle. The CIA was giving him a pen with lethal poison in it. So
there’s no question what we were trying to do. The other thing I don't
know the answer to is: Why didn’t the Warren Commission ever talk to
anybody who was involved in that?
I asked Jerry Ford that once, and he said none of that ever came to
their attention. Jerry Ford deeply believed that Oswald acted alone. There
was also a great sense of putting this to rest. If you go back and listen
to the Johnson tapes, you hear his conversation with Dick Russell, with
senior senators saying, “You've got to go on this,” and getting Earl Warren
to become chairman and getting Jerry Ford, the House minority leader, to
go on. You listen to Johnson on the phone saying, “We've got to do this;
we've got to put this to rest. We've got to deal with this for the American
people.” And they did put it to rest.
I also think you have to remember that Johnson really did turn this
whole Cuban operation off. Kennedy’s assassinated on November 22.
Within days or weeks after Johnson becomes president, before the end
of the year, all the Cuban coordinating committee activities are turned
off. In early 1964, in early February, I’m sent out to go around the coun-
try and tell all these people it’s over.
For whatever reason, Johnson didn't
One of the things want any part of that; he didnt want
; that going on.
they were try ing to There’s no doubt in my mind that
do was maybe get President Kennedy approved of what
the CIA was trying to do with Castro.
The documents show higher authority
off Cas tro. [but] never mentioned the president
n new tls do kaon tie pe idem
the generals to knock
JosEPH CALIFANO
pretty much approved all of the sabotage things that we wanted to do
eventually, and believe me, I know Dick Helms. I know the CIA. ‘They
wouldn't have done what they were doing—in Paris giving AM/LASH
a poison pen to kill Castro—if President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy
hadn't okayed the idea. There’s no question. That committee was driven
by Robert Kennedy. Have no illusions; he was at most of the meetings.
When he wasnt at the meetings, somebody from the Justice Department
was telling us what they wanted to do, and it was constant: “You've got to
find other ways. You’ve got to do something. We've got to get rid of this.”
He called it, at one point, one of the most important things we were doing
in the government.
I think—and | use this in the best sense of the word—Johnson was enor-
mously opportunistic in terms of dealing with the assassination and get-
ting all the good he could out of it. You think about him saying, “There’s
no greater tribute we could pay to John F. Kennedy than the 1964 Civil
Rights Act.” Then you think of him saying, “There’s no greater tribute we
could pay than getting the tax bill.” With many of the programs Johnson
proposed, which we know were in his head during his years in Congress
and the Senate, he constantly invoked President ae “Let’s do this
for President Kennedy.”
Little Washington, DC, was a cultural desert. For years there had
been attempts to have a cultural center in Washington, DC. Nobody had
been able to get it passed, but Johnson said, “We have to have the Ken-
nedy Center.” He got the Kennedy Center. In that sense, the assassination
had a significant impact. It was one of the key factors in Johnson's ability
to revolutionize the country in those four years. It also started to shake
up the country in the sense that followed, in April of 68, Martin Luther
King’s assassination and then, in June of 68, Robert Kennedy’s assassina-
tion. What an incredible group of years.
Camelot, we know, was a myth. There’s no question about that. I
think Kennedy did the best he could. I think you have to look at it in
the context of the Cold War. Remember, Eisenhower had put in motion
something to get Castro thrown out. Eisenhower puts in motion the Bay
IOI
WHERE WERE You?
of Pigs invasion. Kennedy
runs against Richard Nixon
in 1960, and the campaign
is, “I can be tougher than
you can be on Castro.” Both
of them are saying, “TI be
tougher; I'll do this; Pll do
that.” Even after the Bay of
Pigs invasion failed, Ken-
nedy goes down to Miami,
to the stadium down there,
and says, “This flag will fly
in a free Havana. We'll take
it there.”
Robert Kennedy never
could quite tell the Cuban
brigade, as we had in the Army and elsewhere, that we weren't going back
to Cuba. He felt, I think, so guilty. Remember, one hundred Cubans lost
their lives at the Bay of Pigs. We tend to forget that. Every time I put
some restriction on them, they'd go to him. They had total access to the
attorney general, and Bobby would reverse it; tell me, “No, don’t do it.”
We know that Camelot is a myth. But it’s not only John Kennedy.
Robert Kennedy also is portrayed as a saint. We have two saints there.
Saints aren't perfect. And we know Robert Kennedy could be pretty tough
in a whole variety of ways. I think he changed when he started running
for office. He changed not only on the war. When there was pressure in
the Kennedy administration about civil rights and “Do something about
the 64 Civil Rights Act, open up public accommodations, end discrimi-
nation in employment,” the whole focus of the Kennedy brothers was on
politics: “What are the politics of this?”
And there’s the meeting in the cabinet room where Johnson says,
“This is not a political issue. This is a moral issue. We should do this.” In
his book, Taylor Branch writes that Martin Luther King said, “Johnson
was a breath of fresh air because, every time President Kennedy talked
to me or Bobby, the first thing theyd say is, “You've got to get rid of
102
JosEPH CALIFANO
Communists that may be advising. You’ve got to get rid of them. That
could be a real problem.” Johnson never mentioned that. It was always,
“How do we get the Civil Rights Bill passed? How do we get the Voting
Rights Bill passed?”
Those were the times, and they were part of a post-World War II cul-
ture in which the CIA believed: “We can do it,” and it’s fine to assassinate
people if that would be a good thing for America.
TO,
Joe English
Native Philadelphian Joseph English, MD, was thirty years old at the
time of JFK’s death. After Dr. English had served as a research fellow at
the National Institute of Mental Health, Sargent Shriver made him the
first chief of psychiatry for the Peace Corps. When President Johnson
appointed Shriver head of the War on Poverty, Shriver asked Dr. Eng-
lish to become its director of Health Affairs. He played a major role in
the development of the Community Health Centers Program and other
initiatives of the War on Poverty. Wilbur Cohen, President Johnson's
secretary of health, education, and welfare, asked him to become head
of the largest health agency in Washington. In early 1970 New York
mayor John Lindsay tapped him to head the New York City Health and
Hospitals Corporation, where he stayed until 1973, when he became
chair of the Department of Psychiatry at St. Vincent’s Catholic Medical
Centers of New York. He now serves as Sidney Frank chairman of the
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the New York
Medical College.
’m not so sure that President Kennedy wasn't a little skeptical about the
Peace Corps, as most of the people in the Foreign Service community
were, because of the idea of having young students running around in
various countries causing international incidents. I think when he began
to see its potential is when he gave that speech at the University of Wis-
consin at three o'clock in the morning.
The reaction he got from young people when he started describing
something like the Peace Corps was the beginning of it. But when you
saw him seeing off the Peace Corps volunteers, the very first who went
abroad, from the White House, as he often did, then you knew that he
104
Jor ENGLISH
John Landgraf (center left), Joe English, and Sargent Shriver flanked by guides in
North Borneo
understood they were not only going to grow but they were going to come
back with an understanding of the developing world that we didn't have
in this country. He was already beginning to sense that there was poverty
in this country to rival anything we could find in the outside world, and
these young people would come back and be able to help with that from
the experience theyd gained abroad.
So many things developed as a result of the Peace Corps and not just
from the volunteers—for example, Kennedy’s commitment to helping the
volunteers stay well. He said, “I dont want our volunteers to become a
burden on the host country.” [hat’s why we were permitted to put a young
doctor in every country the Peace Corps volunteers went to. The doctor’s
task was to keep them well. They got so good that these young doctors
began to find themselves advising the health minister in the country on
how to improve health generally. Those doctors came back, and many of
them didn't go into private practice. They continued in public service with
that spirit of the Peace Corps and became some of the leaders of great
innovations in health care around the country in the years following.
105
WHERE WERE You?
< i
I had just been at ine White House because I was being asked to become
a special assistant for Health. Stafford Warren had been in that position
and was going back to Stanford, and they wanted me to take it. That was of
course a great honor. I was essentially a college psychiatrist, and the thought
of leaving the Peace Corps was unthinkable. It was also considered unthink-
able by Dr. Warren that someone wouldn't accept this. 1 had just turned it
down and gotten back to the Peace Corps office on Friday morning.
I was up in my office, thinking I had just made the greatest mistake
of my life, when the medical director of the Peace Corps came in with
tears streaming down his eyes and said, “We just heard the president was
shot; they want you down in his office,” in Sargent Shriver’s office. Mr.
Shriver and Eunice were off for an obstetrician appointment, then hav-
ing lunch. I waited in the office until they returned, and the three of us
awaited the news.
The first report was that it was a head shot, and then I thought, O2...
here I am, a psychiatrist. I should know what to do because the next news 1s
going to be worse. It wasn't long until the cable came in and I told them.
I’ve never felt so helpless in my life. It was something I thought I ought
to be able to help with—but I was helpless. Sarge said, “Eunice, I think we
should kneel down around my desk and say the rosary for Jack.” Eunice,
a strong woman as she always was, knelt down, as Mr. Shriver and I did,
and we did that. That gave me a chance to collect my thoughts.
She was shaken, as we all were. I went to her. I knew she was preg-
nant, and I said to her, “Eunice, you have two people to worry about here;
I’m not so sure this is where you ought to be. I think we ought to get over
to the White House and see if perhaps you shouldn't go to Hyannis to be
with your mother.”
We got into a car and went over to the White House. Young Teddy
came down, and he had apparently had the same thought. He took Eunice
up to Hyannis to stay with her mother. Sarge was asked to organize the
funeral once the body of the president got back to Washington. Bobby
Kennedy took care of things until then. Sarge asked Dick Goodwin and
me to stay in to help with the funeral.
106
Jor ENGLISH
At the White House, people were totally in disbelief, crying. We got
into Ralph Dungan’s office, which is one of the larger offices in that wing.
You had Supreme Court justices, members of the staff, a few people from
the Secret Service, and people at first couldn't believe it. It was almost
Greek tragedy. In the midst of all of that, Bill Moyers became the man
who was going to help the president. The new president really felt that
the way the country was going to grieve would have a lot to do with how
they felt about what had happened, so he asked Bill to ensure that, as the
funeral was planned, anything the family, and particularly Mrs. Kennedy,
wanted would occur. It was in the wake of that that Mr. Shriver started
trying to organize the funeral, but I’ve never seen such a sight of tremen-
dous sadness and grief.
There were many issues. One was whether the casket should be open.
Some on the new president’s staff felt that it should be so people could
see that it was really him and that there was no conspiracy here. No one
really knew what had happened. There was a question of whether he had
been kidnapped and all kinds of things going around. In addition, we
were going on the highest military alert I think we ever had because all of
this was going on together. .
So the question was whether the casket should be open. Mr. Shriver
came down. He had been talking with her [Mrs. Kennedy] about that, and
she had asked if Robert McNamara and I would view the remains and
give some advice. They cleared the East Room and closed it off; the two
of us climbed a little ladder, and they opened the casket. I must say, it was
really tough. It was clear that it cou/d have been open, but that wouldn't
have been the way the American people would want to remember their
president. That was our advice to Mrs. Kennedy. Secretary McNamara and
I agreed. It would have been possible if it had been desirable. ‘The presi-
dent’s head was turned to the
side because of what had hap-
pened to the back of his head, The two of us climbed a lit-
and there ee makeup and tle ladder, and they opened
the sort of things embalm-
ers do. It wasn't the president the casket.
that wed seen and known.
107
Wuere WERE You?
Mr. Shriver, who was really thinking of everything, realized we should
have a Mass card, which is pretty standard at a Catholic funeral. Heads of
state were arriving from all over the world, and he wanted to have some-
thing to give them. Even more meaningful to me personally, he asked me
if I would develop the Mass card. The first thing was to find a picture for
the card. There was a wonderful man in the White House at the time,
Sandy, and he was the lithographer. Sandy was a very important person
in the Kennedy White House; he was the one who had the pictures, and
I went to see him. With the tears coming down, he said, “Let me show
you this picture. This was President Kennedy’s favorite picture; he didn't
want it used except for a special occasion,” and Sandy said, “I think this
is the occasion.”
We chose that picture to show to Mrs. Kennedy, and I got the tradi-
tional prayers that go on the back of a Catholic funeral card. Sarge said,
“You better go up and show the picture and the prayers to Mrs. Kennedy.”
So I went up to where she was sitting in the bedroom and showed her the
picture. You can imagine what the reaction was. Then I showed her the
prayers; she looked at them.
The presence she maintained, despite all of this, was quite remarkable.
She said, “No. I want the prayers to be ones that Jack wrote himself. Go
over there and get that book,” which had his inaugural address in it. [hen
she circled in the inaugural address what she considered to be his prayer.
That’s what’s on the back of the Mass card.
~ ie
There are heads of state coming in without notice, landing at the airports,
and now this is the day that we’re marching down to St. Matthew’s for the
funeral Mass itself. Various rooms on the first floor of the White House had
the Supreme Court in one, the cabinet in another, the family in a third, the
former presidents in another. In the East Room was assembled the greatest
gathering of heads of state, they tell me, in the history of the world. Angie
Duke was very concerned because we were late, and he thought somebody
ought to apologize to them. At the same time, he was trying to figure out
how to line them up for the march, because there had been a decision that
there was going be a march to St. Matthew's.
108
Jor ENGLISH
He asked, “Who's
willing to go in there and Jy the East Room was assem-
tell them how they should
line up?” I said, “We have
something called a peer heads of state, they tell me, in
uoe eead ihana p history of the world.
fine idea.”
bled the greatest gathering of
I was the box carrier
for the Mass cards. We
walked in and wondered who in the world would be first in line. As you
may know, it was Haile Selassie; standing behind him was Charles de
Gaulle, and then Prince Philip.
We knew the emperor well because we had three hundred volun-
teers in Ethiopia. Mr. Shriver went up to him and said, “Your Majesty,
we apologize we're a little late, but we wanted you to have a memorial
of President Kennedy,” and presented him with a card. [Emperor] Haile
Selassie, with tears streaming down his face, said, “Mr. Shriver, we need no
memorial beyond the three hundred of Kennedy’s children who serve the
people of my country.” It was a very difficult time to keep things together,
but Mr. Shriver was able to do that. De Gaulle said similarly wonderful
things, and as we went around the room, almost everyone linked Ken-
nedy and the Peace Corps. Of course they knew that Sargent Shriver had
developed it for him—an extraordinary experience.
Angie and Mrs. Duke said, “My God, the two former presidents are
about to arrive; they're in that room, and there’s nobody to meet them.”
He said, “I have to go up, do something.”
‘They asked me, “Would you stand here and make sure they get to the
right room?”
I said, “Of course I will,” and the first one to arrive was President
‘Truman, who was my father’s hero in Philadelphia. I escorted President
Truman in and had a steward bring him some coffee. He was standing
there with his back to the door, looking out the window, when I saw a car
drive up, and there was Ike: General Eisenhower, President Eisenhower.
He got out and took my arm. As we approached the room, he tensed
a little bit because he saw President Truman in there. I remembered
10g
WHERE WERE You?
hearing that they weren't on the best of terms. I thought Id excuse myself
to get him some coffee, but he said, “You stick right with me, son.” It’s
very difficult to turn down a five-star general, let alone a former president
of the United States.
President Truman was aware that somebody had come in. He turned
around and was a bit surprised to see President Eisenhower, who then
said to him, and PI never forget it, “Harry, what are us two sons of what-
ever standing here alive with that young man down the hall dead? You
and I have seen too many young men die.” Then they hugged.
Needless to say, I made my exit. I don’t know whether they had had
any prior encounters, but that was an extraordinary one. You could see
how the death of this president, which produced so many things, brought
them together.
I was trying to get a ride to the funeral Mass when Mr. Shriver said,
“Get into your mourning coat.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “We've got a mourning coat there for you. We want you to
march in the procession.”
I asked, “Sarge, why would I do that?”
He explained, “We're not sure the emperor's going to make it. It’s
kind of a long walk, so we want you to walk behind the emperor and help
him out if anything happens.” I got into the mourning coat and did walk
behind him. He started to fade back, but he did finally make it.
The walk was a little bit scary. There were rumors that there was an
assassin out for de Gaulle.
, . We heard rumors that they
Eisenhower said to Truman, took someone off the roof
“Harry, what are us two sons of of one of the buildings dur-
k 3 ing the march. Obviousl
whatever standing þere alive 2 l
there were great security
with that young man down the concerns. But Mrs. Ken-
hall dead? You and I have seen igs RAKIA Ss es po
oF to march with those chil-
foo many young men die. dren. The minute President
Johnson heard that, that
Jor ENGLISH
settled everything; the president was going to march with her, and there-
fore everybody followed.
~_— —ae
President Johnson was extraordinarily sensitive, and I think here he had
a lot of help from Bill Moyers. The president felt that, not only in this
country but around the world, the perception of this whole event would
in some ways be determined by the funeral. Which is why he made it
perfectly clear to Bill—and Bill really made it clear to me that I was to
be down there while Sarge was trying to organize things—to be sure the
family got anything they wanted, that the funeral could be as they wished,
and it would be moving.
Because of President Kennedy’s military background, Mr. Shriver
was asking that there be troops along the road. I think the commanding
general of the District at that time thought that Mr. Shriver’s rank was
sergeant because he didn't seem to be too accommodating and mentioned
that it would take more troops than they had available. I thought that was
my cue, so I bolted out of the room and went down. The cabinet meeting
was going on. I knocked on the door; when Bill came out I said, “Bill,
we've got a problem. You know, troops.”
Bill said, “I get it.”
Next thing I knew, Mr. McNamara came out, put his arm around me,
and said, “I understand Sarge is having a problem.” I said, “Yes, as a matter
of fact, a number of them.” He said, “Come on; let’s go down.”
Down he went. He sat on the arm of the chair, put his arm around
Sarge, and said, “Sarge, I understand we have some problems here.”
Sarge said, “Td like to have an honor guard, but it seems we don't have
enough troops.”
It was very clear that the general knew who the secretary of defense
was, and he stood like a rod. McNamara said to him, “General, if it takes
five hundred troops, they shall be there. If it takes five thousand, they
shall be there. If it takes fifty thousand and you have to mobilize the
reserves, do it immediately.” Ihe guy was just—needless to say, he got
the message.
‘Then he turned to Sarge and asked, “Is there anything else?”
ele
WHERE WERE YOU?
i Sarge said, “I think the
McNamara came out, put president would have liked the
his arm around me, and Air Force to have a chance to
participate as well. But they say
° c
said, I understand S arge there can't be a flyover because it
is þavin ga problem. as will scare the horses; they’re very
concerned about that.”
This time, McNamara’s gaze
went to the Air Force aide. He
said, “General, I want on my desk by the end of the afternoon the exact
altitude at which a flyover can occur without scaring horses,” and it was
done.
That’s the kind of thing that went on. I think when you put it all
together, there was an extraordinary attention to detail. The troops were
there; the flyover was perfect. So many things, and a lot of that was because
the new president was so sensitive. I think he was aided a lot by Bill Moy-
ers in this regard, to recognize the fact that the world would grieve.
Another question came up that demonstrated this to me. The new
president, in the course of his first cabinet meeting, was raising questions
about the Peace Corps: Would the volunteers return from all over the
world as a result of this? The last thing he wanted was for it to appear that
the wonderful things Kennedy started were over. So he wanted to know
if they would come home. I was the Peace Corps psychiatrist and suppos-
edly should know something about that. Bill came out and asked me, and
I said, “Oh, they're not going to come home.”
He said, “Td like you to come in here and tell the president that in
front of the cabinet.”
Sometimes you have to know when to say no. I said, “Bill, I cant do
that.” I couldn't imagine going in there in that circumstance.
He said, “You’ve got to think of something, because it’s on the presi-
dent’s mind.”
I found out the power of a White House phone. A great professor at
Harvard by the name of Gerald Caplan had helped us develop the mental
health program of the Peace Corps and had seen almost as many Peace
Corps volunteers as I had around the world. I told the White House
II2
Jor ENGLISH
operator, “I need to
talk to Gerald Caplan
at Harvard.” Within
ten minutes, she had
him on the phone.
The sense I got
then was that the whole
world was watching
that White House for
the first time. Not only
in this country but
all over, people were
watching. To get a call
from the White House
during that time was
extraordinary.
I asked Dr. Caplan, “Will the volunteers come home?”
He said, “Absolutely not.”
I asked, “How do we convince the president of this?”
He said, “That I can’t tell you.”
I asked, “Would you be willing to go to Bogota, Colombia, tonight?”
—where the first group of volunteers in Latin America had landed—“and
talk to them?” He was gotten down to Colombia shat evening. I don't
know how it happened, but they arranged transportation for him.
He met with the Colombia volunteers and was able to cable us back
that not only were they not coming home but they were going to be
rededicated. But they had a problem: Out in the boondocks where they
were working there was no television. They wouldn't be able to grieve the
way the rest of the world and the rest of the country would. If we could
figure out some way to help that happen, that would be the best thing we
could do.
Mr. Shriver—and I’m not sure whether he asked the president to do
this or whether he did it himself—got in touch with Punch Sulzberger
and asked if the four-page coverage the New York Times was going to have
of the event could be made into a special edition. He said, “Of course.”
Ir}?
WHERE WERE You?
That four-page edition went to every Peace Corps volunteer in the world
within a week after the funeral. It was one of the few things Peace Corps
Washington did that those volunteers were grateful for. That was the way
they grieved, reading those editions together.
I keep thinking of the tremendous things that lived long after Kennedy
was buried there in Arlington. For example, we had one hundred young
doctors taking care of the Peace Corps volunteers. If anything, I think
their spirit and dedication were increased by the world’s reaction to what
they were doing and the association with President Kennedy.
They came back; one of them became the first medical director of
the Job Corps. Another one, Lee Macht at Harvard, developed the men-
tal health program of the Peace Corps. Another developed the Alaskan
Health Care Federations. They became the leaders of the health centers
that developed under President Johnson's administration as a part of the
War on Poverty. There were so many good things. These were people who,
as a result of that experience, were so imbued with [a sense of ] public ser-
vice that instead of doing what they would normally do after their tour of
duty—going back into private practice, whatever—they did great things.
Thinking about this documentary stirred up a lot of things. For example,
look at the effect that period had on the mentally ill in this country and
the mentally retarded. President Kennedy was interested in helping the
retarded, as was his sister.
He made two ten-year commitments. One was that we would be on
the moon; he kept that one. The other one is less well known: that the
state hospitals, which were not the best places to be—and the mental
retardation centers even worse—would be diminished by half within ten
years, which was something nobody ever thought was possible. It was
done. It wasnt done as perfectly as Kennedy would have wanted it, but
it started the process. The Community Mental Health Center program,
the Community Mental Retardation program—all those things came out
of that period. President Johnson continued them, and they go on today.
That’s an example of the way President Kennedy’s legacy continues.
TTA
Richard Goodwin and
Doris Kearns Goodwin
In 1963 Richard Goodwin was a thirty-two-year-old advisor and speech-
writer for President Kennedy, having joined his staff in 1959 when the
commander in chief was a senator. Goodwin became Kennedy’s dep-
uty assistant secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs and helped
develop the Alliance for Progress, which aimed to bind the US and Latin
America closer together. He later served as secretary-general of the
Peace Corps, remained in the Johnson White House as an advisor, and
coined the phrase “the Great Society” for Johnson’s reform program.
Since leaving politics, Goodwin has authored numerous books, plays,
and articles. Future Pulitzer Prize—winner Doris Kearns was a twenty-
year-old student at Colby College in Maine, soon to graduate magna
cum laude. She also worked in the Johnson administration and then
taught at Harvard before writing several widely acclaimed books on
American presidents. She appears regularly on Meet the Press.
ICHARD: Kennedy had been in World War II. He'd been wounded
badly, and he had suffered, and all that suffering and pain really made
him much more aware of people who didn't have those privileges. During
his campaign for the presidency, he was probably most moved by going
into the coal mines of West Virginia and seeing real poverty. He had
taught himself that a lot of people were suffering, and he might be able to
do something for them.
DORIS: Adversity is a great teacher. Just as FDR wouldn't have been
the same empathetic president had it not been for his polio; he shared a fate
of hurt with lots of other people. The war was a huge binder of people—a
115
WueErE WERE You?
common mission, with
people from different
parts of the country, dif-
ferent economic back-
grounds—that a lot of
our politicians don't have
today, that shared back-
ground of having been
in war together. He had
pain, it was said by Bobby,
almost every day in his
life, so he knew how to
get through difficulties
and could project that
onto other people to whom fate had also dealt an unkind hand, whether
it was poverty, discrimination, or racial problems.
RICHARD: We knew he was often in pain; you could see that by
the way he moved. He was taking medication of various kinds, but I don't
think any of us—not me, anyway—knew the extent to which he was suf-
fering most of the time from medical problems. His adrenal gland insufh-
ciency almost killed him. He had been through a lot of pain and suffering.
That tempered him a lot, changed his outlook on the world—if you think
youre about to die, as he did many times on his way up the ladder.
DORIS: There was a sense, just while growing up in the 1960s, that
there’d been a big divide between then and the ’50s, which was my high
school years, when there was Eisenhower, when there was a sense of lack
of forward movement on domestic progress. I was part of the civil rights
movement. Id gone down South. Id been at Martin Luther King’s “I
Have a Dream” speech. There was now a sense of this decade promising
real change.
There also was a sense, for me, having been at that “I Have a Dream”
speech, of wishing that JFK would come there and feeling disappointed
that he hadn't. There was a sense that the civil rights movement was ahead
of JFK at that time. It’s not as if I looked upon him as a great hero, but I
did feel that time was an exciting time to be alive, to be in college, to be |
II6
RICHARD GOODWIN AND Doris KEARNS GOODWIN
one of those young people, to be a part of
the civil rights movement. It was a sense of
knowing that youre in an era that’s going
to change the country and feeling proud to
be young at that time.
The presidents who have made a mark
on our country’s history have understood
the technology of their time and what the
moment of communication was. Lincoln
understood that speeches would be printed
in pamphlets and read in their entirety, so
he worked on those speeches endlessly.
Teddy Roosevelt understood that it was
time for mass media, so you had to have
shorthand phrases like “Carry a big stick, speak softly” that would make
headlines in the country. FDR understood the power of radio. JFK under-
stood the power of television, the power of photography, and the power of
the moving picture. Those have kept him alive ever since.
RICHARD: The private Kennedy had a lot more humor. He could
joke about what was happening. He also said he was “going to go get”
guys who opposed him on something. He was vindictive that way, but
he was always cool about it. Really, the modern phrase “cool? probably
applies to him better than anyone else who's ever occupied the White
House. Tough. Cool, but tough. He could swear. He'd swear a lot. We all
did. He was leading a very active social life while he was in the White
House, as we all know now. We had a pretty good idea about it, but I
never knew the dimensions of it. But that something that was going on,
yes. We saw every beautiful woman hanging around. We were all young
ourselves too, and we had that terrible reaction you do to sexual beings.
DORIS: No guilt seemed to transfer from one part to the other.
That’s an extraordinary thing, to be able to know that youre risking—or
maybe he doesn't know that he’s risking—the country’s image of him by
the girls he’s bringing into the White House. The reporters weren't cover-
ing it in those days, so you weren't taking the same risks. They didn’t write
about it. Everybody was doing the same thing.
r7
WHERE WERE YOU?
RICHARD: The reporters and the White House staff, all of us knew.
What you couldn't do today, we did. Now there’s too much of a spotlight
on it, but that really seemed trivial at the time, and we all partook.
Kennedy had had successes for his entire life, and then he ran into the
Bay of Pigs, which was a disastrous failure and which caused him, I think,
to cry in his bedroom that night after a brigade had been defeated. But I
think the job did enlarge him. He got more tolerant of other people and
other views. Failure’s a great teacher, and he was a man who was capable
of learning. At the time he was killed, he had expanded himself and was
much more tolerant of other people.
I was home, at my house in Virginia. I had talked to Kennedy the night
before, when he was down in Texas, and I knew he was going to appoint
me to another job in his administration. I called him and told him the
news had leaked and that the New York Times had it, and he said, “We
better announce it right away.”
I was at home writing that announcement for myself, having been
partying with Teddy the night before with a group of Latin American
people. We were up pretty late, and I was probably a little hung over. I
had to check on something, and I called Kenny O'Donnell to clear some
of the names with him. His secretary answered; I asked for Kenny, and
she just said he wasn't there. He was in Texas of course. Then she said,
“Haven't you heard, Mr. Goodwin? ‘The president's been shot, and he’s
dead.” I hadn't been listening to anything because I’d been writing. It was
a terrific shock to me because, I think, like everyone else who worked for
him, I loved the guy.
- -I got in my car; I didn’t know what to do about it, so I drove down to
the White House. I figured there, at least, I could find out what was going
on. The streets were all silent. I was silent. I walked into the White House,
and the mourners were sitting there. Arthur Schlesinger was there. Kay
Graham was there, Ken Galbraith. They'd all heard the word that Ken-
nedy had been killed. We just sat down and talked and grieved together.
But then we had to prepare for the return of the body from Texas, and
we had some very explicit instructions on how to do that from Jackie. She
RICHARD GOODWIN AND Doris KEARNS GOODWIN
wanted the East Room made up as
it had been when Lincoln was shot. She wanted the East
didn't have any idea where that was,
so I just scrambled around. I called Room made up as it
the Library of Congress and gota þad been when Lincoln
description of the East Room as
when they had Lincoln's body there.
We instructed the people who were
was shot.
working with us that they should set
it up exactly the same way. That’s what they tried to do and what I tried
to do as much as we could. We were just racing about frantically trying to
be true, literally true, to what Jackie said she wanted.
My initial reaction was just grief—wailing, “How could they do this
to him?”—and disbelief. Then we all kept busy arranging for the funeral
that was going to happen in the next day or two. That’s the best thing
when your'e experiencing a grief reaction, if you keep yourself busy doing
things. We brought in a catafalque for the body, and Jackie had said some-
thing about getting an eternal flame. Of course I had no idea what that
was. She said it was like the flame at the Arc de Triomphe. That task
was delegated to me. I thought the only people who might know about
it would be the military. I called the Pentagon and told the ~ in
charge, and he said, “We don't have an eternal flame.”
I blew up. I said, “You guys can blow up the world, but you can't find
a little eternal flame for the president’s body?” They got something, using
piped-in gas. Then we just worked through the night on details of the
funeral and what the White House would look like. They put an honor
guard in front of the White House, waiting for the body to come. I don't
know if it was surreal. Actually it was too real.
I don't think I had much thought about Johnson, whom I had known
a little, but I could feel the loss of Kennedy. Kennedy’s great contribution
to the country was that he made us all feel a little better about ourselves
and that there was movement on things. He had a youth, and he had
humor. He had become much better at directing things since the Cuban
Missile Crisis, and that was now gone. I knew nothing much about John-
son except that the Kennedys didn’t like him. [To them] he was just a
IIQ
WHERE WERE You?
a hanger-on basically, even though he
« > was vice president. Kennedy always
You guys can blow up P rany
,, made sure Johnson had something
the world, but you can f to do, sending him on foreign trips
find a little eternal and that kind of thing. Kennedy
j » never joined any talk about Lyndon
fi ame fi el the p residents being fae We had a sense et we
body p” were going through a big transition,
a hat wasnt the concern on that
night. We just knew Kennedy was
gone, and he had been the center of our lives.
DORIS: Dick has an amazing story from having written a campaign
speech for JFK. He and [Ted] Sorensen were in the plane together for
the whole time of the 1960 election, and Dick had written a line for JFK
talking about his programs and what might be accomplished. The line
had read, “All this will not be accomplished in one hundred days.” Ken-
nedy slashed it out. “I don’t want to be measured by one hundred days, the
New Deal.” He changed it to a thousand days, which turned out to be the
number of days of his life as president.
i—i
I was a college student, and I was on my way from Colby College in
Maine to New Haven to go with a boyfriend to the Yale-Harvard game.
In a certain sense, the bus trip was a microcosm of what happened in the
country because at first, when we found out about it [the assassination |
by stopping at a gas station, everybody looked to one another for comfort
and solace.
There was a real sense of camaraderie on the bus. Midway through,
we found out he had actually died, and later that the Harvard-Yale
game was going to be canceled. Then some of the feisty sporting guys
on the bus got really angry: “Why are they canceling it just for this?”
It was that whole mixture of emotions—from sadness, reaching out to
one another, to where, by the end of the bus ride, I felt like I was just
all by myself, all alone, experiencing this. I couldn't wait to get back to ©
college with my friends, where I would go right after I got to Yale, and
I20
RicHARD GOopDWIN AND Doris KEARNS GOODWIN
then go back home again so that I could be with them to deal with
this whole thing.
~=_—_ a
RICHARD: I think what they [Kennedy’s cabinet] were trying to do
to Castro was very foolish, and they obviously didn't succeed in doing it.
Castro outlived all of them and is still there; he’s still alive. There were
attempts to assassinate him, and they didn't work. Bobby did want to
pursue the Cuban Communist government, and he was clearly involved
in that. I was traveling with Bobby in Latin America, and Communist
groups were demonstrating against him. He said to me, “God, I saved
that guy’s life.” What he meant by that was somehow he had prevented
Castro from being killed. I don't know if that’s true of course, but that was
Bobby’s reaction to the people demonstrating against him.
DORIS: Dick once met with Che Guevara, who gave him a box of
cigars to bring back to Kennedy. Dick didn't know that one of the ways
they had considered for killing Castro was with an exploding cigar. He
gave the box to Kennedy, who asked, “Are they good?” and he said, “Mr.
President, they re the best.” Kennedy took it, cut it off, and lit it. Then he
turned to Dick and said, “You should’ve smoked the first one.” Only later
did he come to realize what that meant.
RICHARD: I had no idea at the time. I was involved in.it only at
the very beginning, when we were beginning to set up a counter-Castro
operation. After that I was involved with Latin America as a whole and
had very little to do with the anti-Castro operations, which were looking
silly then as they did now.
After Kennedy was killed, I thought there was a possible conspiracy
there. There was a lot of hatred running around the country at the time,
especially given his sympathy for blacks and civil rights, but in all the
years that followed we've never come up with anything. Bobby Kennedy
thought there might be something else there, and I think he said he would
pursue it if he got to be president. I’ve read all the books and heard all the
arguments. We’re unwilling to believe that a lone, crazed individual could
have done this to our country, but the evidence is that that’s what it was.
Pll have to go with that.
I2I
WHERE WERE YOU?
Bobby never wanted to talk about it, but he sud-
denly turned to Dick when they were in New York
socially together and said, ‘Tf it was anybody, I
think it was the Mafia, not the Cubans. j
DORIS: Bobby never wanted to talk about it, but he suddenly turned
to Dick when they were in New York socially together and said, “If it was
anybody, I think it was the Mafia, not the Cubans.”
RICHARD: “If anybody else was involved.” But it’s that “if.” Bobby
had made deep enemies among some of the Mafia chiefdoms. They obvi-
ously hated him. But nobody was ever able to link it. And God knows
enough people have studied it.
~~ i
DORIS: Johnson would talk about JFK and rather with warmth toward
him. Johnson hated being vice president, and he wasn't happy at all in
that role. But instead of blaming JFK, he much preferred blaming Rob-
ert Kennedy. Johnson hated Bobby, hated him with a passion. I think he
projected all of his anger about being vice president and being impotent
onto Bobby.
Johnson said, “JFK liked listening to my stories.” Every now and
then he said, “You know, he was a young whippersnapper when I was the
majority leader.” Kennedy had that yellow, jaundiced face when he was in
the Senate. When he was swimming in the pool, telling those stories, you
could tell Johnson loved the idea that at one point hed been on top of
JFK. T'I never forget when Chappaquiddick happened; I was with John-
son at the time. At first he felt sad. How could this happen once again to
the Kennedy family? It just seemed like fate was unkind. Then he turned
around and said, “If I were in a car with a girl and a bumblebee stung the
girl, Td be in Sing Sing. This guy’s going to be a hero.” He didn’t turn out
to be a hero for it, however.
RICHARD GOODWIN AND Doris KEARNS GOODWIN
~~ —
Passing the Civil Rights Bill took both Kennedy’s death and Lyndon
Johnson's leadership of the Senate. It was an extraordinary thing LBJ did
in that very first speech to the joint session of Congress: “No memorial
could speak more eloquently to JFK’s death than the passage of this civil
rights bill at the earliest possible moment.” He made it the test of his first
year in the presidency, and that was a risky thing to do. Had he not suc-
ceeded in that between November 1963 and his own election in 1964, he
would have been a failure. The chances of getting that filibuster broken
were very slight in anybody’s mind. It had never been broken on the Civil
Rights Bill.
But LBJ was at home on Capitol Hill. This is what he was made for. It
was what he was born for. It became a deeper passion for him than I think
it was for JFK. Johnson called senators in the middle of the night. He had
them over for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner. He loved it. I dont think
JEK loved putting his arm around these guys and doing the false things
that you have to do. JFK was rational; he thought it was time for the civil
rights movement. He would’ve done what he needed to, but I don't think
he would have put his whole soul and person, capacities, or talents into
it. So that’s a huge thing that happened. ‘The civil rights movement itself
started it. JFK gave words to it, and that’s where JFK could summon the
country in a way that LBJ wasn't as easily able to do. But then LBJ got
it done, and Johnson also did it pretty well with the Voting Rights Act.
RICHARD: Johnson was much more skillful dealing with Congress
than Kennedy ever could’ve been. Johnson knew all these people. He lived
among them on the Hill; he knew how to deal with them, and he was
shameless when he did that.
a —ie
When Johnson was president, I left the White House to go into opposi-
tion on the Vietnam War. Would Kennedy have continued it? I don’t
think so, because John Kennedy was a profoundly rational human being.
Bobby was much more guided by his emotions, but John Kennedy was
guided by his reasoning and thought. The Vietnam War turned out to
12;
WHERE WERE You?
be trying to do something that was impossible. It became totally irratio-
nal and very costly for the United States, and I think Kennedy would’ve
stopped at that point. But nobody can know what he would’ve done if he
was confronted with the reality of losing in Vietnam, which was going to
come. I like to think he would have gotten out and stopped.
The only way to end the war was to get out, and it destroyed Johnson's
presidency because he didn't get out. I prefer to believe that Kennedy
would’ve realized that. I think he would’ve tried to get out of it, but I
don't know. That decision is lost to history. He also had the strength of the
five advisors. He would’ve turned them around. When they saw what he
wanted to do, they would move in that direction.
DORIS: The promise is big because it sets forth for people what might
have been, not just for Kennedy but for the country, had that movement
of caring about social justice and economic opportunity not been cut by
the war. Three years isn't a very long time to become a great president.
Most of our great presidents have had two terms, not one—much less
just three years.
I remember Dick telling me he had a discussion with Bobby Kennedy
at one point. Bobby was lamenting that it wasn’t fair that his brother had
only had three years, and how could he be a great president with only
three years? Dick, trying to console him, said, “Julius Caesar only had
three years.” Bobby looked at him and said, “Yeah, but it helps to have
Shakespeare write about you.”
Among popular opinion, Kennedy still ranks up there among high
presidents, which just shows the power of the memory and the power
Dick, trying to console him, said, “Julius Caesar
only had three years. ” Bobby looked at him and
said, “Yeah, but it helps to have Shakespeare write
about you.”
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RICHARD GOODWIN AND Doris KEARNS GOODWIN
of the pictures. Among historians, I would guess he’s probably an aver-
age president. I haven't seen a recent poll, but I think the Cuban Missile
Crisis will always be considered a huge turning point. ‘The fact that he
turned away from that and then gave the American University speech
shortly thereafter will be a big thing. The fact that he was there when
the civil rights movement was being pushed forward will help. But there
just wasnt time for his promise to be fulfilled, to allow him to become a
Washington, a Lincoln, an FDR.
When you think about the eras of progressive change ne Amer-
ica went through in the twentieth century, you had one at the turn of
the twentieth century with the Progressive Era. You had the New Deal,
and you had the 1960s. Those are eras when the country was moving
toward its own ideals and trying to realize them: social justice, economic
opportunity.
When you look back on those times, you feel proud of what your
country was doing and what it was working toward. Kennedy was there at
the conjunction of a lot of different movements. You've got the civil rights
movement; you've got the women’s movement. Those things are moving
forward and fundamentally changing people’s lives, and the fact that he
was there, even if he didn’t start those movements—he fostered them
perhaps, and his being there helped to engender them—it reminds you of
5
WHERE WERE You?
what the country can be like. That’s really special. The other thing I think
has lasted for him forever is photography and moving pictures.
Had he lived in the time of Lincoln, where we only would’ve seen
him without a smile on his face, with his back stiff in front of a camera,
in two dimensions, I’m not sure the hold would have been there. But we
have that ever-present young person shot down in the prime of his life—
so handsome, so vital, so full of life. Everybody looks back and remembers
a time when he or she was young as a result of that.
On top of that you have the family. Had he not had Teddy and Bobby
and all the people who have come since, you wonder whether the story
might have had an earlier ending, but the family kept going on in public
life. Then with the family having the deaths they had; when Bobby dies,
you go back and watch JFK's assassination, and you think about him. It
just kept that memory alive for a much longer period of time. Modern
technology and the photography, when he was president historically and
what the country was going through, and the fact that there was a family
so that the chapter didn't end with his death, I think, makes a difference.
126
PART THREE
POLITICS
Mike Barnicle
Veteran journalist and commentator Mike Barnicle began his career as
a speech writer and aid to prominent political figures, including for-
mer California senator John Tunney, vice presidential hopeful Edmund
Muskie, and Robert F. Kennedy. Moving into journalism, he wrote for
the Boston Herald, New York Daily News, and Boston Globe. Barnicle’s
regular column in the G/obe ran from 1974 to 1998, and his mid-1970s
coverage of school desegregation in Boston helped earn the paper a
Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He has won numerous awards and
recognition for his work over the years—including honors from the
Associated Press, United Press International, and DuPont Columbia—
and has appeared frequently on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Hardball with
Chris Matthews, and NBC’s Today Show. In 1963 he was a twenty-year-
old student at Boston University.
was in a second-floor apartment that I was sharing with two other
guys. We were going to Boston University at 834 Beacon Street in
Boston, Massachusetts, right outside Kenmore Square. Like most Ameri-
cans my age, I can shut my eyes and see everything as if it’s a Moviola
replaying itself. I can remember the bulletin on the radio: Three shots had
been fired at the presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas. I remember the
bulletin a few minutes later that the president had been taken to Parkland
Hospital and then reports that the president had died. I can remember
going to the window of the apartment; there was a liquor store beneath.
The owner of the liquor store came out into the street with her hands
up in the air shrieking, shrieking, “Someone shot the president! Passersby
not knowing—there was no instantaneous communication news in those
days as there is now—passersby stunned and shocked.
129
WHERE WERE YOU?
John F. Kennedy was shot on a Friday,
and I took the train from Boston to Fitch-
burg, where my mother lived, that Friday
afternoon. It was a train of grief—com-
pletely silent. By noontime the next day,
Saturday, my mother insisted that someone
had to represent the family at the funeral
in Washington, DC. I didn’t have a car. I
barely had a license. A couple of friends of
mine, older friends, were going to drive to
Washington to the funeral. We didn’t know anything from anything. We
drove to Washington. We stood outside the Capitol for nearly a day, when
the casket bearing the president was brought to the rotunda. We felt then
that we had attended the wake of the president of the United States, and
then we drove ten hours back to Massachusetts. So my mother was happy.
She was satisfied that the family had been represented at the funeral. It
was an Irish Catholic pilgrimage.
We weren't alone, my two friends and I. People had come in buses
and trains. I likened it to reading about Lincoln’s funeral and Roosevelt's
funeral, where the train came north from Georgia, because to look around
the Capitol Mall and outside the Capitol from in front of the Capitol all
the way to the Supreme Court: hundreds of thousands of people. They
weren't rich people. They weren't famous people. ‘They were ordinary peo-
ple with calluses on their hands who had felt compelled and been drawn
to Washington to bury their president.
~~ ai
The Kennedy compound is literally a bookend of so much of our history—
the lawn we see here, the house itself, which is a museum to a family that
has made a stamp on American history. Senator Ted Kennedy sat on this
porch on summer nights, sometimes with me, and talked in a nostalgic
and wistful way about the helicopter coming from Otis Air Force Base to
land on this lawn carrying the president of the United States, his brother,
John F. Kennedy. The children who were around at that time, the Kennedy
children, competed with one another on the weekend to see which one was
130
MIKE BARNICLE
best in order to take the helicopter ride back to Otis with the president on
Sunday night.
All of this was started by Joseph P. Kennedy, who came here as a
second-generation Irish American, a Catholic, who prospered and knew
what he wanted for his family from a very early time. Only in later
years did people like Ted and Robert Kennedy realize the hold, the grip,
Ambassador Kennedy had on the family. The love they had for him and
the influence he had on them, I think, only became apparent really as
they proceeded to the presidency, in the case of John F. Kennedy, and
to the Senate in the case of Robert and Edward Kennedy. ‘Ihe impact
he had on the family, it’s here today. They were given a path, and they
didn't have to worry about what the rest of us have to worry about. But
they worried about other things, they'll tell you. They had the license and
the liberty, freed from having to make money to feed their families that
most people have to do. They had the license and the liberty to carve out
their own lives, and that’s what Ambassador Kennedy really intended for
them to do.
In talking to Ted Kennedy several times about that, part of John F.
Kennedy’s appeal, part of his wry, ironic humor, his approach to life itself,
was because he knew innately that he was number two in the ambas-
sador’s mind in terms of who would be president, who could be presi-
dent among his children. Joe Kennedy Jr. died over the English Channel
toward the conclusion of World War II, and the mantle passed to Jack
Kennedy, and he certainly was carrying the mantle. But he always knew,
according to Teddy, that he was number two.
I became aware of them quite early in my life. I was a little kid. My
uncle had been killed at Midway, and he received the Distinguished Ser-
vice Cross, which was the second-highest award granted to those who
die in a war. My grandmother thus was a gold star mother. When he was
running for reelection to the United States Senate from Massachusetts
in 1958, John F. Kennedy visited my grandmother at our home. I can
remember then being dazzled by the sight of the United States senator—
one, by an Irish Catholic United States senator, and two, by a United
States senator and Irish Catholic who had almost attained the nomina-
tion for vice president of the United States in 1956.
I3I
WHERE WERE You?
They came to Hyannis
on weekends. Politics .was
always the meal that was
served here, I think, three,
four, five times a day with
everyone around the table.
It was all politics. Fun—
but it was always competi-
tion with the fun, the touch
football games they did out
here. There was always a
fierce sense of competition
that they handed down to
everyone amazingly.
John F. Kennedy Jr. had a touch football team here. He gathered
neighborhood kids, but he selected which kids in the neighborhood he
thought were better than the other kids so that his team could win, so
he could beat Robert Kennedy Jr. The competition gene in that family is
incredible. As a family, they were all for one and one for all, but within
the family the competition could be pretty brutal in terms of how they
would go after each other. I dont mean physically. But no one was spared
the cutting humor, the joke, or, if they overstepped their bounds, getting
called onm:
I don't think the succeeding generations can sustain the legacy. We
think writing now is 140 characters in a tweet. Everybody has a blog. We
beep at drive-through windows. We're such an impatient culture. I dont
think the memory of that family, the legacy of the family, of the presi-
dency, can sustain itself.
So that was the pane of glass I was looking through, and I still think I’m
looking through it in a sense when I think of him, when I see him. I still
see him in terms of either 1958, coming to visit my grandmother, or in
1962, the presidential motorcade going up Commonwealth Avenue in
Boston as he was en route to a Democrat state fundraising committee
i32
Mike BARNICLE
dinner on behalf of his brother, Ted, who was running for the Senate in
1962. I still see those things.
One night several years ago, the fog just coming in over Hyannis Port
Harbor, Senator Ted Kennedy was sitting on the porch, smoking cigars,
having some after-dinner refreshments. I asked him, “Do you ever sit here
and look out at the ocean, and when you shut your eyes do you see your
brothers?”
He said almost instantaneously, “All the time, all the time. When I’m
out on the ocean in my boat, I can see them. I can feel them with me.
They've always been with me. They'll always be with me.” The house, the
place, those memories, the presidency—quite a thing.
That was the beginning of the rock that began rolling downhill, and
that’s one of the largest reasons that it [the assassination] still has such
a hold, such a grip on us even before you get to the various conspiracy
theories that are out there. ‘The hold that President Kennedy had was
on the nation, but more powerfully on our imaginations. It instilled
such pride in people, my mother, my father. My father had died shortly
after Jack Kennedy was elected president. The pride they felt in having
an Irish Catholic in the White House—because they were of an age
and of a generation where they could recall and recite various elements
of prejudice toward them because they were Irish Catholic, coming to
this country from Ireland—the sense of pride it instilled in people, my
mother especially ...
My mother had a picture of John F. Kennedy on the wall with a palm
from Palm Sunday. The palm had to have been fifteen to twenty years
old before she took it down. But she never got over the pride she had
in the fact that John F. Kennedy
was president. Nor I think did
she ever get over the sadness Edward Kennedy said,
of losing him. She felt it was a
i “When Im out on the ocean
personal loss. I think many Irish
Catholics, especially around in my boat, Í can see them.
Boston, felt it as a personal loss. I can feel them with me.”
They took that from us. They
took him from us.
m
A
oy
Harry Belafonte
Having risen to prominence in the 1950s as the “King of Calypso,”
Harry Belafonte leveraged his musical success and fame to emphasize
civil rights activism. He had campaigned for JFK in 1960, performed
at the inaugural gala hosted by Frank Sinatra, and become a key sup-
porter of Rev. Martin Luther King, the 1961 Freedom Riders, and others
fighting for the cause. Three months before Kennedy went to Dallas,
Belafonte helped organize King’s historic March on Washington, the
setting for his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
was first really aware of John F. Kennedy during his [1952] run for the
Senate in Massachusetts. He had been brought to my attention as a
rising star on the Democratic horizon, and there was some question as to
what he would mean to the black community up in Boston, one of two
places in the North that were as extreme in their racial conflict as any
Southern city. The intensity on race issues was quite severe. Based upon
the racial conflict, our and Dr. King’s focus was that it was one of the cities
we'd have to have on our list of places that must be attended to.
In that area, there was enough liberal power for us to call upon to
stir things up a bit and get us on point. When John Kennedy stepped
in, there was some question as to who he was and what he brought to
the table. We were to find out later that he wasn’t all that we'd hoped he
would be—things in the Senate he voted on troubled us, both on foreign
policy as well as domestic issues. I didn’t really get to know him with
any great specificity until he ran for the presidency. Up until that time,
tracking his record in Congress, it was rather—from our perspective—
undistinguished. There wasn’t anything for us to be terribly excited
about. As a matter of fact, there were good reasons for us to be somewhat
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Harry BELAFONTE
cautious as to how he
might vote on civil rights,
human rights, and other
such issues.
When he ran for the
presidency in 1956, I got
a call from a young man
by the name of Frank
Montero. He was an
African American out of Connecticut or Massachusetts, if I remember
correctly. But I knew Montero, and he said that Kennedy wanted to see
me. I was curious. I didn’t know him. We'd not had any exchange, and
why he wanted to see me was a curiosity to me. So I said, “If he’s looking
for me to have some relationship to him running for the presidency, that’s
off the table because I’m committed to Adlai Stevenson.” Although the
primaries hadn't fully played out and we were in a foot race, my loyal-
ties were to the Stevenson camp. However, they were most insistent, and
when I met with Kennedy he came up to my apartment in Manhattan on
the Upper West Side. He had just left New Jersey, campaigning for the
New Jersey primary.
Through Frank Montero, I had discovered before he arrived that one
of the reasons he was very insistent on talking with me was that they had
just lost Jackie Robinson as a favorite son, as somebody whod be there for
the Democratic Party, pushing the issues of the Democratic Party in rela-
tion to the black vote. But there was a conflict: Robinson was quite angry
with the Democratic Party for certain racial slights.
As a matter of fact, in pressuring the Democratic Party for details on
what would happen with the black community and the black vote, what
they were offering to the black community—Jackie Robinson decided to
break ranks and endorsed Nixon. ‘This gravely challenged the Democratic
Party and its sensibilities to the black vote. Although they were very cautious
about how they treated the black vote, they were fully aware that they had to
have it. By Jackie leaving, one of the great icons of the period and even now,
they had to look around for who could fill that space—who could be a coun-
terbalance to the fact that Jackie was leaving. A number of people of color
m5
WHERE WERE YOU?
were called, and I was one of them.
When I met zbith Jo hn, The Democratic Party strategist con-
cluded that to have me in their camp
Iwas quite taken by would be a big plus in a response to
the fact that he knew Jackie Robinson's break. They would
: ush me a bit to the front of their
so little about the black eee When I met with John, I was
community. quite taken by the fact that he knew
C50 little about the black community.
He knew the headlines of the day,
but he really wasn't anywhere . .. nuanced or detailed on the deep depth of
black anguish, of what our struggle was really about. It kind of passed him in
the night. He had some familiarity, but there wasn't a great deal.
I asked him in detail about Dr. King. He knew very little, just that
somewhere there was this force, and he was out there making some mis-
chief, He knew for a fact that the most important element within the
Democratic Party, which was the Southern Democratic oligarchy, that
vote was seriously threatened by Dr. King. Therefore he had reason to
keep as much distance from King as he possibly could because he needed
that Southern power, the Dixiecrats.
Kennedy was not only charming but also had a bit of a wit to him. He
knew some things about me as an artist and some things about my career,
but I could tell he wasn’t a passionate fan. I understood that the evening
we met in my home was strictly a political move and a political agenda.
In the final analysis, I told him that I wouldn't endorse him, that I
wouldn't be in his camp until we knew more clearly and in greater detail
what his platform would be in relationship to the black vote and black
people in general, that I wouldn't even consider endorsing him because |
was committed to Stevenson. I remember him saying to me, just as he was
about to leave, that if down the road he was able to gain the endorsement
for the primaries and became the official nominee for the Democratic
Party, would I then endorse him? I said, “Let’s cross that bridge when you
come to it, and let’s see where the whole political landscape resides.”
I didn’t talk to him again until I began to encounter people like Har-
ris Wofford and Bobby Kennedy and more people in the Kennedy camp
136
Harry BELAFONTE
who began to move more vigorously toward the front of the game and
began to dig more deeply into the black community. I had just come back
from touring Europe, and the primaries had fallen his way. He had won
it. Ihen Frank Montero again called and said, “We'd like to talk to you
again.” When they came that time, they had far more details on the black
vote, what the platform would look like, and I said, yes, that I would help
him.
I think there’s absolutely no question that not only did history do
more to make John Kennedy than John Kennedy did to make history,
but that history was precisely the upheaval which this country had at its
dawning. The black movement was very vigorous and beginning to move
into a place that really had him imbalanced. He didn't quite know how to
deal with us. The war in Vietnam wasn’t quite the war it came to be, but
it was beginning to bubble seriously during his watch. I think, between
the peace movement and certainly during the civil rights movement, he
was caught in a place for which he was completely ill prepared to lead.
But as events grew, as things revealed themselves and he had to make
decisions, there’s just no question that he always fell on the right side of
the question—that as he evolved and as he grew, he became more and
more caught up with us. I think more than anything else, not the politics
so much but the moral persuasion, the moral force of a cause, was what
made him have to take a good, hard look at who we were. But | must say
that, more than anyone else in that family, Bobby was the most effective.
Bobby had a big hand in shaping how the campaign would be han-
dled, how we would deal with a lot of issues, deal with people of color—a
lot of that fell into Bobby’s space. It was Bobby who went down to Geor-
gia and called the Georgia state legislator when Dr. King was imprisoned.
John called Coretta, but it was Bobby who called the governor of Georgia
and worked it out, put the game on the table.
I thought that Dr. King endorsing Kennedy was a place Dr. King
didn’t want to go or shouldn't go. We had no idea what this guy would do.
We had no idea what his policy would really be, and one thing Dr. King
couldnt afford was to endorse someone who, during his presidency, turned
out to be not in the best interests of black people. If he had endorsed him,
a lot of that blame would be at Dr. King’s doorstep. So we mapped out a
Lo
WHERE WERE You?
way to do it so that it appeared as though Dr. King was endorsing him
but hadn't really, and- that was an ad that we took out in the New York
Times. The ad applauded John Kennedy for reaching in and saving Dr.
King from the humiliation and the threat of being sentenced to life on
the Georgia chain gang. That kind of gave the word that Dr. King was
favorably inclined but hadn't officially endorsed him. The rest of us did.
We stepped in very vigorously, and I campaigned for John and got
to know him. I wasnt as intimately engaged with him—although we
had reason for meetings and exchanges—as I was with Bobby. Bobby
and I had great traction and great moments together because the Justice
Department and all that Bobby was about was directly in our crosshairs
every day. It was extremely important to us to have America and the Jus-
tice Department on the side of the movement, because without the fed-
eral force, without the federal government, without the federal courts,
without the Supreme Court, without those forces landing squarely on our
side of the struggle, we had no other place else to go.
Not only did I share a feeling that the Kennedys were of our time and
a huge look into the future of America, but we liked the style in which
he [Kennedy] did it. He did it by identifying with an America that was
far more energized with the possibilities of conquering the future. We’re
going to space. We're going to change the way in which all things are
done. We're going to have a foreign policy that looks at the world dif-
ferently. All of these things coming from the Kennedy camp were very
refreshing and very promising for us. So though we had some areas in
which we had issues, the vast canvas of the Kennedy period was a lot of
things that were in our favor.
He had style. He loved the popular culture of the day. He not only
loved what Sinatra and the Rat Pack and all of those with him did, but
he showed up at my concerts, invited me to the White House, and made
me know that what I represented culturally he found tasteful. Bobby and
Ethel came very often, especially to the concerts I gave in Washington,
DC, at the Carter Barron Amphitheater. With Kennedy, with his brother,
and with the family in general, especially Sarge Shriver, there was a sense
that the Kennedy family was our future, was what America and what cer-
tainly white America should be about and could be about.
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Harry BELAFONTE
We had a lot invested in who they were, and we enjoyed them as a fam-
ily. A lot of the stuff came out about his handsomeness and philandering—
that played a very little role in our interests. We were sure there was a lot
of flirtation going on. Everywhere I went, especially when there was an
entertainment clan, the Hollywood group, all the most popular actresses
and actors were vying for space with the Kennedys. I had a friend who once
said, “Popular people used to have things thrown at them by their fan base,
handkerchiefs and underclothing and all sorts of things. But the Kennedys
had women throwing body parts.” That’s how insane it was in our culture
about the power and the attractiveness of this family.
~ ale
That same year, Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was for me, like for
everyone else, an epiphany. To see that much passion contained, to see
that much of America on display, to see people from every strata of life
caught in this magnificent moment, displaying and letting the world hear
their voice in relation to the best that was in the American profile was
quite breathtaking.
I had been called upon to gather the international celebrity commu-
nity of artists. There were huge political sensibilities at stake and certainly
Kennedy’s sense of jeopardy in his political ambition and all else that was
at play, including J. Edgar Hoover, because I think he had a huge impact
on this, pushed this to the edge. In the face of all of that, debating with
the White House, trying to bring reason to the table, they were deeply
concerned. ‘They said there was going to be a lot of violence. Even if we
thought within our own ranks they were lovely people and good of heart
and there'd be no violence, we had no way of controlling external forces
that might infiltrate, that had mischief on their minds. We had to assure
them that we felt secure enough in the way we were doing this. We had
massive labor movement players, and a lot of the security we had was
heavily dependent on how well the labor movement and labor workers
handled crowd control.
The voices of the high-profile artists of the day were very much in
evidence. Needless to say, when that was pulled off with such great suc-
cess, the windfall of good that came from that moment in our history
Lo
WHERE WERE You?
did an awful lot to convince the Kennedys and certain forces within the
Democratic Party that we were much better at the game than anybody
had imagined. For us to be able to pull that off—the unification of labor,
show business, artists, workers, blacks, and across the entire spectrum of
American society, all in evidence in harmony—gave them greater faith for
the future that was yet to come but was to be filled with so much tragedy,
with the murder of [John] Kennedy, Dr. King, and Bobby, even people
like Medgar Evers. The worst was yet to come.
When the president was shot, I was in Europe. I had just embarked on the
first of several missions to ascertain the climate in Europe for our move-
ment. We did it for two reasons: not only to broaden the base of interna-
tional information on what our struggle was about but also because we
were desperate for resources. We were drying up very quickly. Too much
bail money, too much was being expended. It was a very costly move-
ment. Too many bodies to move, too many cars to hire, too many people
in different areas that needed funding for our cause. We needed to find
other frontiers. There were a lot in the civil rights movement who resisted
the idea of going to Europe. For some it was the edge of a betrayal that
we took a domestic issue, as they called it, and put it into the camp of a
neighbor’s purview for them to have a commentary on.
But there were others of us who felt very strongly that betrayal was
falsely concluded, that our mission had far more meaning than that nar-
row sphere of betraying the family. If there’s a cruelty to the extent that
black people were experiencing America’s animosity toward us, what
family were we supposed to be protecting?
On November 22nd I was in Paris reaching out to the arts commu-
nity, and we eventually made a successful showing there. I was having a
meeting with Yves Montand, Simone Signoret, Jules Dassin, and Melina
Mercouri. They were in Paris shooting the film Topkapi, and I'd gone
to the studio to watch them shoot. Afterward we were going to James
Michener’s house for a kind of a cocktail evening. Word came while we
were at the studio that John Kennedy had been shot. We werent quite sure
of the accuracy of the information or what the details were. Some said he
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Harry BELAFONTE
had died, and some said he was just gravely wounded. When we got the
information, we were absolutely stunned, like the whole world was. And
by the time we retired to the cocktail party, everybody was caught up in
the news. It was on television, French television, and fortunately a lot of
people spoke fluent French who could translate the details for those who
were not so fluent. At that very moment, I tried to reach Dr. King. I tried
to reach Andy Young. I tried to reach Stan Levinson, who was a real close
friend and confidante on issues. I called Coretta King. We were not only
caught up in the great tragedy of the moment but were desperate for
information as to who did and what caused it. Our great concern was that
someone of color may have done this thing. Certainly the mood and the
anger and the rage that the black community was feeling suggested that
somewhere in our midst there may have been an individual or a group
that stepped into the space to have this act of vengeance. I needed to
get back immediately and was able to get a plane that very evening, Air
France, to get back to the United States and hook up with Dr. King. But
I remember that I was in that environment, with these artists and friends,
when the information came.
What made me concerned was that a little group had just been
formed called the SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Com-
mittee) in which I had played an important part. Ella Baker, who was
one of the leaders in our movement, had reached out to me to talk about
this young group, that they deserved to be funded and to be recognized
and that most of them would perhaps be breakaways from the Southern
Christian Leadership Conference and Dr. King’s movement.
When I met these young people, most of them were teenagers, some
in their very early twenties, and some younger, like Julian Bond, John
Lewis, and Diane Nash. She was seventeen years old and with child. These
are all young people, but in their midst is a group of very angry street guys.
They belonged to different groups
and were the earliest mobilization
toward what became known as the
At that very moment, I
Black Panthers. I was concerned
that SNCC and some disgruntled tried to reach Dr. King.
young man brandishing a rifle, who
I4I
WHERE WERE You?
had always said, “An eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” would be found to
be the assassin. So for us, there was a visceral, deep energy to quickly find
who this was and how to prepare ourselves for it. We had a meeting with
Dr. King, Andy Young, and others to discuss what happened if this turned
out to be in our camp. For what this meant to our movement, meant to
our people, and meant to America, I don't think we ever would have been
forgiven had it turned out that a person of color had done that.
e ih
Regarding the assassination itself, something sticks in my mind that’s
almost indelible. Bill Moyers interviewed one of the high-ranking offi-
cials, if not the head, of the CIA, and in that interview, way back—I think
color television hadnt even been fully introduced—Bill Moyers asked
about assassinations and about foreign policy and the relationship to
assassinations. The interviewee said that in the CIA and in the work they
did, they couldn’t be distracted just with political or moral consequence.
When Bill evoked the moral question, the interviewee said, “We have no
moral questions in the work we do,” and Moyers asked, “But what hap-
pens if you get caught?” I'll never forget the interviewee. He said, “We'll
never get caught.” Bill pressed the point: “But what happens if somewhere
the—” The guy looked at him, very calmly and very precisely, and said,
“We will never get caught.”
I don't know that what Malcolm [X] said—“The chickens have come
home to roost”—had to do specifically with the vindictiveness of the —
moment, that you're finally getting paid back. I thought it was far more
visceral. I don’t think it was just a view of history. Malcolm was some-
where else. He saw it as an act of vengeance. He was also speaking, |
think, for what is still a characteristic in American foreign policy. We
are killing off a lot of innocent people, and there’s a price being paid that
Americans know nothing about because we're not in the middle of the
anguish of daily losing innocent victims. When we do experience it, we
go ballistic, correctly so, whether it’s the Twin ‘Towers or whether it’s what
just recently happened in Boston. When it happens to America, we are
most passionate in our response. This goes on every day in the lives of tens
of thousands of people, all over this globe. This goes on, and there’s a deep
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Harry BELAFONTE
hurt, a deep resentment
and a great political loss
for America. These things
happen, and even back
then I think what Mal-
colm was alluding to was
that somehow justice was
being meted out.
What saddens me is
that America was made to
witness its vulnerability as
a nation that believes it’s
on a righteous course, that
says it is morally power-
ful, morally precise. Those
deaths did an awful lot to
jolt us into a new space of thinking about ourselves as a people, as a nation,
as a force. What is deeply saddening is that we don't seem to have learned
much from that fact. Although other characteristics attest that we are on
a correct path in the decisions we’re making that affect human conduct
and the personality of our country politically, we have still given much too
much space to the mischief makers. We still give much too much in this
country to those who would willingly put America into a bloodbath and
are holding onto their impression of others. America is as deeply racist
today as it was then. It only plays out that theme very differently because
the success of our journey has been to change the law, to force the law to
be enforced by the vigilant, but by and large there are still those who are
quite willing and quite eager to put this country into a bloodbath because
they feel theirs is the only cause and theirs is the correct mission for
America. Racism is very much alive and very much at play.
[also think a lot of the criticism being laid out against Barack Obama
that is ascribed solely to political differences is infinitely deeper than that.
I feel a lot of it is precisely the fact that a big part of America has never
been able to accept that a man of color sits at the head of our government,
leading us to decisions they must abide by. Ihat sticks in their craw. They’re
143
WHERE WERE You?
fiercely angry. Those Southern
America is as deeply racist forces who were defeated dur-
ing the days of Kennedy and
today as it was then. Johnson have never forgiven
the Democratic Party and the
Dixiecrats. The Democratic hier-
archy fled and became the new [conservative] wing of the Republican
Party—that’s being played out today. The hostage America became to
those forces in the South that were deeply angered by that new experience
is very much at play today. They haven't lost that sting yet.
144
Andrew Young
In 1963 Andrew Young was a thirty-one-year-old pastor and civil rights
leader, about to be named executive director of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. Started by Martin Luther
King Jr., the nonviolent SCLC aimed to end segregation in the South.
Young’s work in coordinating many of the key protests in the early ’60s
proved fundamental to the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting
Rights Act. Young went on to become a US congressman, ambassador
to the UN, and mayor of Atlanta. In 2003 he created the Andrew Young
Foundation to support and promote education, health, leadership, and
human rights in America, Africa, and the Caribbean.
was in Chicago, and Kennedy was making a speech in a black play-
ground on the South Side. I went, and I have never seen anybody light
up a crowd like that. People didn’t campaign in the black community very
much before him, but the fact that he was there, and to see him and the
response—lI thought that was a new day.
When Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested and Kennedy made a call
to Coretta, nothing like that had ever happened before. For somebody
running for president, being concerned about the wife of Dr. King—and
he wasn't even thought of necessarily as a great civil rights leader yet;
King was just a black man in prison—that Kennedy made a call got him
elected. That plus Chicago. Dick Gregory used to say that people voted
in Chicago like they'd never voted before. It was the turnout in Chicago
that actually swung that election. Those two events helped make him
president.
Kennedy was a man of vision, the vision that America has got to lead
the world. That was at the end of the Second World War. I remind people
145
WHERE WERE YOU?
all the time that what the
Second World War did was
stabilize the world, which
had been destabilized by
the printing press in the
fourteenth century. When
they printed the Bible in
German and Latin and
English—every time the
printing press reprinted
the Bible somewhere, you
had a revolution and a new
nation. It took the Second
World War, the New Deal,
the Great Society, and the
Marshall Plan to make all
that work. For the first time
in five hundred years, by
the 1960s the world was on
a level playing field. Every
nation on the planet was
growing at 6 to 10 percent, and it looked like we really had it together.
Then came the combination of assassinations, which took away the
visionary leadership, and technology. If it hadn't been for that genera-
tion of television journalists reporting on our civil rights movement, we
wouldn't have had a civil rights movement.
We didn't expect a lot from him. Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, and
Bill Clinton grew up in the South. They had black friends as children. But
the Kennedys really had no contact with black people; they even had Irish
maids. We knew their hearts were in the right place, but they just didnt
know any better. It was mostly in the interaction with Bobby Kennedy.
But the president and Dr. King always related very well. Whenever Mar-
tin went to visit him, he said that when you meet with President Kennedy,
he asks you questions for an hour. If you meet with President Johnson,
he talks for an hour. The truth of it was that Kennedy was a seeker in the
146
ANDREW YOUNG
Whenever Martin went to visit him, he said that
when you meet with President Kennedy, he asks
you questions for an hour. If you meet with Presi-
dent Johnson, he talks for an hour.
human rights area. This wasn’t naturally a part of his background, except
that growing up Irish theyd had to fight through discrimination in New
England when he and when his father were growing up, but theyd sort
of come through that. |
Once Kennedy came on the scene, he represented the future. I never
missed a Kennedy speech. When the president spoke, everything stopped.
It was like Joe Lewis fighting or Jackie Robinson starting in baseball.
We hung on the words of the president just because he talked about civil
rights, acknowledging it as something he was aware of as a deep-seated
American problem. I saw pictures of John Kennedy and Dr. King in
households in Kenya and in the artisan shacks of the carvers in Zim-
babwe and Tanzania. The world identified with these men. They had a
vision that could unite the planet. Now there were competing visions at
the same time, and the Cold War view was competing with this global,
universal vision.
i he
I was at a training conference for voter registration workers in Frog-
more, South Carolina, at the Penn Community Center. Septima Clark
had developed a literacy program. We were teaching people to read and
write, to register to vote. Dorothy Cotton and I were the staff, and we had
fifty people from across the South, from Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama;
these were the leaders we were training, who later became the voter regis-
tration leaders. [heir children became the elected officials, and for me that
was the heart of the civil rights movement.
When we heard the news, everybody immediately stopped and got
on their knees—those people, they were what the Bible calls “the salt of
147
WHERE WERE YOU?
the earth.” They were not educated. When they prayed, it wasnt so much
in words as in chants and song; and when we heard that he had died, the
prayer continued for America. Dr. King was coming there. He was really
shaken. He said, “If the hundreds of Secret Service men can't protect the
president, then anytime they want us we've got to be ready to go, because
there is no protection.” He took the president’s death as a sign of his own
assassination. We preachers try to make something good out of every
tragedy, and there’s an old expression, “Ihere’s no remission of sins with-
out the shedding of innocent blood.”
Lyndon Johnson was ready, but we felt that Kennedy gave his life
for us. It was the moral mandate that America had to change. I dont
think anybody else could’ve done what Lyndon Johnson did. m almost
ashamed to say that I doubt Kennedy could’ve gotten a civil rights bill
through Congress, and yet without Kennedy’s life and death, Lyn-
don Johnson couldnt have gotten
it through. So in many respects,
E verybody immediately together they saved America.
. The conversations between Lyn-
a P ed and g ot on their don Johnson and Richard Russell are
knees. classic; the one thing Lyndon John-
son said that I disagree with was,
148
ANDREW YOUNG
“This will cost us the South for genera-
tions.” In a way that’s true, except that We felt that Kennedy
he became president, Jimmy Carter ii
became president, and Bill Clinton gave his ife for us.
became president. Eisenhower’s judges
really paved the way for the civil rights
movement, from the Supreme Court right on down to the Fifth Circuit,
but that period gave us a lift. It gave us a challenge. It set the stage for
modern America, for a modern world. At the same time, it led to the end
of what you call the Greatest Generation.
I don't think it drained hope; I think it produced a new generation. Bill
Clinton will say it was John Kennedy who inspired him, Jimmy Carter,
from rural Georgia. There is from the Southland, and from the struggles
we've had, an emergence of leadership and vision that was strengthened,
the revolutionary vision that all men are endowed by the Creator—not
by their wealth, not by their education or their color, but by the Creator.
We have the need. We have the technology, and we actually have the
money. There is no deficit in the global economy, but nobody’s giving us
the vision or has put together the vision that would enable us to bring this
money to meet human needs in a safe, secure, and profitable way.
All of the pieces are there; we just don't have the kind of vision that
would’ve come out of a Kennedy—if hed lived another fifty years or
another forty years—or Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, or any of the
leaders who were taken from us too soon. Each of these men stood for
something, and though they were killed, I say that the assassins’ bullets
just freed the spirits. The spirit of John Kennedy is very much alive. The
strength of this country is that we do represent the whole world, and
these men somehow captured that vision.
149
Carlos Bringuier
Born and raised in Cuba, where he worked as a lawyer, Carlos Bringuier
came to America in 1961 and opened a clothing store in New Orleans
called Casa Roca. In 1963 he was a twenty-nine-year-old exile, activ-
ist, and delegate to the anti-Castro Student Revolutionary Directorate.
On August 9 of that year, Lee Harvey Oswald was handing out “Fair Play
for Cuba Committee” leaflets when Bringuier started a fight with him.
Both were arrested. A week later, Oswald debated the issue of Fidel
Castro and Cuba with Bringuier on the Bill Stuckey Radio Show. Tony
Plana played Bringuier in the 1991 Oliver Stone film JFK.
had great faith and expectations for Kennedy. I thought he understood
the Cuban situation and that he was going to solve the Cuban prob-
lem—and ultimately the problem of the United States—because Castro,
a Communist ninety miles from the United States, was a very dangerous
thing for the US democracy.
I heard about the Bay of Pigs plan in Guatemala right before I arrived —
in America. One of my brothers was already in the training camp in Gua-
temala, and from Argentina I went to Guatemala to visit my parents. I
learned about the invasion then because my brother was training as a
paratrooper. When I arrived in Miami, I came looking for work, but then
I got taken over by the romanticism of those years, about freeing Cuba.
So I signed up to go on the invasion. I was waiting to be transferred
to Guatemala, but that never happened. My father-in-law wrote a letter
from Argentina and warned me not to get involved in it, and I thank him
for my life.
April 17, 1963, was the day of the invasion. April 15 was when they
bombed the military airports and air bases in Cuba, and April 18 and
150
CARLOS BRINGUIER
April 19 were when the fighters
ran out of ammunition. But they
were brave people. I was not happy
with the way the Kennedys treated
the people who participated in the
Bay of Pigs.
There were not too many
Cubans at that time here in New
Orleans. At the time there were
only maybe six hundred, eight
hundred, but there were several
organizations, and I was the dele-
gate of the Cuban Student Direc-
torate. I was talking with two
young Americans one day when
this man walked into their store
and joined our conversation about Cuba. He explained that he had been
in the Marine Corps in the United States, that he had trained in guerrilla
warfare, and that he was willing to offer his services to us to train Cubans
to fight against Castro.
I told him I didn't have anything to do with military events, that my
job in New Orleans was only as an anti-Castro man. It was only about
press and propaganda. I was not involved in military activities. Then he
put his hand in his pocket and offered money to help. I said, “I can-
not take the money. You have to send that money to our headquarters in
Miami.” Ihe next day he showed up at the store again. I was not in the
store. He left a guidebook for the Marines with my brother-in-law. His
name was at the top: Lee Harvey Oswald.
When he was giving me the guidebook Oswald had left, my brother-
in-law told me that Oswald looked like a very nice person. I said, “I don't
know. I have something in the back of my head, in the back of mind; for
some reason | dont trust him. I dont know if he’s a Communist, an FBI
agent, or whatever, OK? But theres something in him—I dont trust him.”
I didnt know he had already tried to kill General Walker in Dallas.
That first meeting I had with Oswald was August 5.
I51
WHERE WERE You?
The second time I met him in person was August 9—that was a
Friday—in New-Orleans. A Cuban by the name of Celso Hernandez
came crawling to my store and told me he had seen an American on
Canal Street with a sign that said Viva Finer! Hanns orff Cusa passing
out some Communist pamphlets. So we went over there. We picked up
another Cuban man, and we went looking on Canal Street. We could not
find this American. We took a streetcar, and I had a big sign with me,
with the Statue of Liberty stabbed in the back; it said DANGER! Cusa
Lies 1n Cuains 90 Mites Away.
We took a streetcar, but we could not find him. Finally we came back,
and I went back to the store. When I was in the store, a third Cuban,
Miguel Cruz, came running into the store and said, “Hey, Celso discov-
ered the American again on Canal Street, and Celso’s watching him.”
I took the sign again; we went down there, and I found Oswald in the
700 block of Canal Street after St. Charles. He was almost in front of the
first store where I’d worked in New Orleans. Immediately I remembered
him, and then he looked at me.
In the first moment he had a smirk on his face that looked like he was
not happy with what was going on. But then Oswald extended his hand
to shake hands with me. I refused to shake hands with him. And then, as
Celso had been insulting him in Spanish—because Celso didn’t know any
English—I started insulting him in English, calling him traitor, Commu-
nist, and different things. It was around two o'clock, I believe, and there
several Americans surrounded us to watch what was going on.
I was angry, and I was going to punch Oswald. I took my glasses off
and approached him to punch him. But in that moment he put his hand
down and said, “OK, Carlos, if you want to hit me, hit me.”
That stopped me cold. My blood went cold. I said, “This guy knows
what he’s doing. He wants me to break the law by punching him.” I
decided not to punch him.
At that moment, Celso grabbed Oswald’s literature, tore it up, and
threw it in the air. There was a policeman who used to patrol in that block,
and he approached me and said, “OK, let him do his demonstration. Go
to your place.” I said: “No! If in Cuba they don't allow us to do this, I am
not going to allow them to do this here.”
T32
Carzos BRINGUIER
I turned to the people who were watching—there were maybe fifty or
seventy of them—and I started explaining who Oswald was, that he had
tried to infiltrate my organization. Then two police cars arrived, and we
were taken to the First District police station.
In the First District station, they started questioning Oswald. At first
he started answering questions. But when he was asked about the mem-
bers of his organization, he refused to answer in front of me. Then he was
moved to another room. ‘That day we had to put down twenty-five dollars
for a bail bond in order to get free.
The third time I saw Oswald was on August 12. ‘That was the day
of the trial at the Second Municipal Court. I thought that was the last
time I was going to see him. I brought the guidebook for Marines to
the courtroom. I showed it to the judge, and the front page where it had
Oswald’s name on it, and I explained to the judge that the person who
had originated the whole incident was Oswald, when he tried to infiltrate
my organization. If he had not done that, then nothing would have hap-
pened on the day we had the problem.
The judge—I saw his eyes, and I knew he understood what I was
saying. The judge dismissed the charges against us and fined Oswald ten
dollars. That was the only time in history that Oswald was charged in a
court of the United States and fined. I thought that was the end of it, the
last time I was going to see him.
But then the next day, Bill Stuckey, a newsman from Nee Orleans,
contacted me because he wanted to find out the address of Lee Harvey
Oswald, to interview him. I said, “I don’t like that idea. They don't allow us
to go out in Cuba and be interviewed.” But then I sensed he had decided
to do the interview anyway, and I said, “OK, instead of the interview why
dont you make a debate? That way both sides have the right to say their
opinions, and the people can judge over the radio who is right and who is
wrong.” That was a famous moment in New Orleans.
On August 16,a Cuban man left a message that Oswald was in front
of the International House holding a demonstration. I went over there,
but Oswald had already left.
A friend of mine from my school in Cuba, Carlos Quiroga, and I
decided to send someone over to Oswald’s house posing as a pro-Castro
T53
WHERE WERE You?
Cuban. This was to find out what the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was
planning to do here in New Orleans. Quiroga went over there and had
a conversation with Oswald on the porch. That conversation was when
we found out that Oswald spoke Russian. At one moment a daughter of
Oswald came to the porch, and Oswald grabbed her and talked to her in
Russian. Quiroga asked him if that was Russian, and Oswald told one of
his many lies: Yes, that was Russian; he was learning Russian at Tulane
University. He never attended Tulane University.
The last time I saw Oswald was on August 21 when we had the debate
at WDSU radio in New Orleans. In the studio during the debate, I didn’t
feel at any moment that he was a violent man.
Before we arrived for the debate, we were in the lobby. At one moment
the two of us were together, and I asked him why he didn’t change sides
and try to help his family and his country—because what he was doing
was wrong. He told me, “Carlos, I am on the right side. You are the one
who is on the wrong side.”
Then we went in to the debate. I didn’t know that another person in
that debate—Ed Butler from the Information Council of the Americas—
had discovered things about Oswald that I didn't know. They'd confirmed
that Oswald was attempting to become a citizen of the Soviet Union as
well as his defection from the United States to Russia. I was surprised by
that. That was why I only spoke twice during the debate—I thought the
other people had better weapons than mine, and my ego was not so big as
to try to take over the debate.
But during the debate I asked Oswald one question that had never
been asked of him before the assassination. I asked him if he agreed with
the dictator, Fidel Castro, when on July 26 of that year he'd qualified
President Kennedy as a ruffian and as a thief.
Oswald stopped for one second before answering: “I will not agree
with that particular wording, but the United States government—’ And
then he started blaming the United States government. That was the only
time before the assassination that Oswald was asked a question about
President Kennedy.
After the debate, I issued a press release that I brought to the UPI,
the AP, the newspapers, and the television stations. I asked the people of
154
CARLOS BRINGUIER
New Orleans towne to their con = SS
gressmen and ask for a congressional
investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald, Oswald as an ag ent of
a confessed Marxist and an agent of Fidel Castro? Yes.
Fidel Castro in the United States.
Nobody paid attention to me.
At that time I had known Communists, and most of the Communists
I knew, I believed, were dangerous. But I didnt categorize him at that
moment as violently dangerous. Oswald as an agent of Fidel Castro? Yes.
He'd confessed that he was a Marxist, and to me anyone who was a Marx-
ist committed the same crimes of the Marxists who put innocent people
in front of the execution wall.
i, ie
A relative of mine was working in a stock market company. He called the
store and told me that Kennedy had been shot. They'd received a teletype
that Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. That was the first news I had.
Ten minutes after that, he called back and said the teletype said that
apparently he had been seriously injured because they saw blood in his
hair. At that moment, my illusions of going back to Cuba deflated com-
pletely because, in my opinion, the only person in the United States who
had a moral obligation to help us recover Cuba was President Kennedy.
‘That was my first thought.
After that, I received a call from the delegate of the Cuban Revolu-
tionary Council in New Orleans, Frank Bartes. He wanted me to sign
a telegram with him to Jacqueline Kennedy, offering our condolences.
I refused to join him in that. I said, “We have to wait.” I wanted to find
out who was behind the assassination. In my mind, it could have been a
stupid racist who was mad at Kennedy. It could have been Mafia people.
It could have been Communist people. it could have been anyone from
a spectrum of different ideologies. I said, “We have to find out who it is
before we send a telegram of this type, because we have to word the tele-
gram according to who is behind the assassination.”
After that, I left the store and went to my house. I was living in one of
the poorest sections of New Orleans, in the St. Thomas Housing Project.
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I was having a late lunch over there, and I had the radio on. I heard
the name Lee Harvey Oswald. I jumped from the chair and went to the
phone. I called the FBI first to tell them who Oswald was.
Then I called the Times Picayune to tell them who Oswald was. ‘The
Times Picayune wanted me to go immediately over there, and I went over.
They already had Ed Butler and Bill Stuckey over there. Butler told me to
wait and don't be interviewed for a few minutes because Stuckey was trying
to arrange a deal, a monetary deal, to provide information about Oswald.
To me that was revolting. I never thought that, with the president killed,
somebody would be asking for money to give information. I said, “No, But-
ler, I’m sorry. PI give everything that I know free. I don't need any money.”
To me, President Kennedy was the last hope that the Cuban people
had to get rid of Castro. The day I heard that Kennedy was killed, those
hopes went out the window—because Kennedy had the moral obligation.
He had sworn in Miami in December 1962 that he was going to return
the flag of the Bay of Pigs invasion, of Brigade 2506, to a free Havana.
When Kennedy was killed, there was no one who was going to take over
that statement from Kennedy.
Sunday morning, when Oswald was led down the hall, I was at the
Secret Service office talking to an agent. He received a phone call, and he
turned to me and said, “Oswald has been shot.” It was like when you see
the end of a movie. You're watching a movie and you see “The End.”
I said, “Castro got rid of Oswald.” I was thinking that when Oswald
went to trial, the one who would be sitting there would be Fidel Castro.
They got rid of Oswald, and everything was confused. Everything became
“Who killed Oswald?”
On November 22 I was interviewed on local, national, and inter-
national television. I said,
oT dont know if Lee Har-
Ij ump ed fr om the chair and vey Oswald is the assassin
went to the phone. I called or not, but if it’s proven
that Lee Harvey Oswald
the FB Ifi rst to tell them who is the assassin, the hand of
Oswald was. Fidel Castro is behind the
. ° 39
assassination.
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CARLOs BRINGUIER
My statement arrived in Cuba, and the next day Castro held a gather-
ing of the masses in Cuba because he wanted to address the “lies” against
him. He mentioned me and tried to distort what I had said. I am sure that
day and the next day Castro was sweating very badly because of what I said.
I was interviewed by the Warren Commission, and I was told by sev-
eral people, among them Ed Butler, not to be too outspoken against Cas-
tro; just tell, matter of fact, what happened with Oswald. ‘That is what I
did in the Warren Commission.
Secret memos from the CIA that never reached the Warren Com-
mission but would come out in 1998 referred to two assassins Castro had
sent to the United States in 1960 and 1961 to kill Kennedy. The Warren
Commission never knew a lot of things about the assassination. The com-
mission was just a seal of approval of an idea that was planted by Presi-
dent Johnson, who was convinced that Castro was the one who killed
President Kennedy. Johnson said that several times to different people,
but I believe that President Johnson wanted to close the case, say it was
one person, not a conspiracy, and that’s it.
< —ae
I know Fidel Castro. Presidents of different countries and presidents of
the United States, they’re presidents. They are politicians. But Castro is
not a politician—Castro is a gangster.
The first person he ever killed, on February 22, 1948, was a cousin of
mine: Manolo Castro, who was leader of the students in the University
of Havana and was the person in charge of Cuban sports in 1948. Fidel
Castro killed him.
On November 1, 1958, he killed another cousin of mine, Rosco
Menyano—or at least he ordered the situation that ended with the assas-
sination of my cousin. He was a pilot with the Cuban airline, and his
plane was leaving Florida to Cuba. Castro sent some people from the
26th of July Movement to Florida. Those people hijacked the airplane
before it reached Cuba. When they told my cousin they wanted the plane
to go to the Sierra Maestra, my cousin said to them, “We don't have gaso-
line to reach the Sierra Maestra. We will crash.” They said, “You have to
go.” He said, “I won't go.”
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WHERE WERE You?
They stabbed him to death. The plane eventually crashed in the Bay of
Nipe. Several of the passengers were killed. Some of the mercenaries, terror-
ists, from the July 26th Movement were killed too, but some of them survived.
One of them just recently died in Coral Gables, Florida. When | returned to
Cuba in 1959, I saw a Bohemia magazine in which they were interviewing the
survivors of that hijacking, and they were bragging about how they had to kill
the pilot because he didn't want to reach the Sierra Maestra.
I am a Christian. I don’t believe in falsely accusing a person. If Castro
was innocent, I would have never blamed him. But I know him—he’s an
assassin. He had been doing that for years, and he had every motive to kill
Kennedy. Kennedy was going to get rid of him.
I believe that is one of the problems Bobby Kennedy confronted
after the assassination, that he felt guilty because, I believe, Kennedy was
playing a game he could not really be involved in. Kennedy was not an
assassin. Kennedy could have had various bad traits as a politician or as
a person, but he was not an assassin. That was something in which he
should not have been involved.
I was a lawyer in Cuba. I used to work in a criminal court, and I have
never put blame on an innocent person. I believe that Castro is an assassin.
Only an idiot could think that Castro is a saint, that Castro is not a gangster,
that Castro is not an assassin. We are dealing with an assassin: a serial killer
assassin. That is the man who has been in power for fifty-three years in Cuba.
I told that to Garrison, the district attorney of New Orleans, at the
time of his investigation, and I told him that if he wanted me to work for
him, I would work for him for free. I didn’t want to frame a Communist,
and I didnt want to frame an anti-Communist. What I wanted was the
truth, because I knew the truth would blame Fidel Castro.
I learned about Jim Garrison's investigation because an American by
the name of David Ferrie came to my store asking to meet with Dr. Car-
los Bringuier.
I said, “I am Carlos Bringuier.”
Ferrie didn’t remember that we had met in 1961, I believe, for ten
minutes at his house with Sergio Arcacha and Carlos Quiroga. Ferrie at
that time was helping Arcacha with the Cuban Revolutionary Council. I
had heard from Cubans that they didn’t like Ferrie because of his tenden-
cies. Then I wanted to meet Ferrie. We went over there and stayed for ten
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CARLOS BRINGUIER
minutes. When we left, I told Arcacha, “If I were you, I would not like to
be seen with this guy.”
Ferrie forgot about that, and he came asking for Carlos Bringuier.
He told me that Garrison was doing a witch hunt on him and that Gar-
rison was going to frame him for the assassination of President Kennedy.
He said something at that moment that I didn’t like. He said that all the
judges should be hanged.
My father used to be a judge in Cuba. I didnt want my father to be
hanged. I got very short and said that I didn’t have anything else to talk
about with him, and he left. At that moment I was feeling great. I was
thinking, Okay, the district attorney is going to discover that Castro is behind
the assassination. That was my first thought.
After a few days I started receiving news from Cubans who were
being interviewed by the district attorney, and the line of questioning was
not in that direction. Then I called the district attorney’s office and asked
to have a meeting with Garrison. The next day they called me, and I went
over there to meet Garrison.
Garrison was a very impressive guy. He was six feet something, and
he looked like Perry Mason in a lot of ways. He was telling me his latest
conspiracy theory. I dont know if it was conspiracy theory number three
or conspiracy theory number thirteen, because he had a lot of conspiracy
theories. He mentioned a lot of different names of Americans that never
came out in public. I don’t want to mention their names because they are
very respectable Americans. When he finished explaining his theory to
me, I said, “You are either stupid or you are a Communist.”
He said, “I won't discuss anything else with you unless you take a lie
detector test.”
I said, “You can give me three lie detector tests! But I don’t discuss
with you until you give me a lie detector test.”
He sent me to take the lie detector test. We went to the office of Wil-
liam Gurvich, who administered the lie detector test. A couple of days
later I received a call from the district attorney s office that he wanted to
meet with me again.
Garrison apologized to me and said I had passed the lie detector test
perfectly. That was when I offered to work with him without pay. I didn’t
want to blame a Communist or an anti-Communist—what I wanted was
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the truth, and I knew where the truth was going to take me. Several times
after that I was called to Garrison's office. One time I was called because a
Cuban was brought from Miami who was going to identify Arcacha with
Oswald. For Garrison, that was tremendous, a perfect thing for his theory.
Then James Alcock, who was the assistant district attorney, brought
me into a room with a Cuban. I knew this Cuban. He had been living
in New Orleans, and I knew him as a thief. His name was Emilio San-
tana, and Santana was identifying Arcacha with Oswald in a meeting on
Washington Avenue of some people from the Alpha 66 Movement.
They wanted me to be the translator. I translated everything Mr. San-
tana said. When he finished, Alcott was all excited because now they had
Arcacha. I knew that was wrong. Arcacha and I were not on speaking
terms when Arcacha left New Orleans in 1962, and I knew Arcacha was
not in New Orleans when this guy was placing him in New Orleans.
I asked Alcott if I could ask Santana a question. Alcott said yes. I said,
“Okay, it could not have been where you said, on Washington Avenue
and Madison Street, the service station of the Suarez Family.” I knew
the Suarez Family had the service station there and that they were with
Alpha 66. Then I said, “The person that you said was there, the delegate of
Alpha 66, his name is Miguel Bretos.”
And he’s like, “Yes, that’s it! Miguel Bretos was the man who was
there.” I knew that Miguel Bretos had a lot of resemblance, physically, to
Arcacha. You had to see Alcott’s face—everything disappeared in front .
of him. When I finished he said, “I want to check that the translation of
Dr. Bringuier has been completely accurate.” He was testing me to see if
I had changed something; he could charge me with obstruction of justice
if I said something other than what Santana said to me.
After we left, I talked to Santana. I said, “Santana, what are you doing
here? How did this happen?” He said, “These people from the district
attorney showed up in Miami. They started questioning me, and they
offered to pay for my trip here, to put me up in a hotel, and give me drugs
if I testify.”
In Cuba in 1959 I was part of the 10 percent of the people who knew
what Castro was. Ninety percent of the people were for Castro; 90 per-
cent of the people said, “Oh, Castro is the man.” In New Orleans, when
CARLOS BRINGUIER
Garrison was district attorney, 90 percent of the people were for Garrison.
He duped everybody. Remember that New Orleans has always been a
very corrupt city, and Louisiana has always been a very corrupt state. Gar-
rison was the district attorney, and he had the dirt on all the politicians.
Garrison started his investigation because of David Chandler, who
was a newsman with Life magazine. He talked to him about everything
he had. The problem for Chandler was that Chandler was putting the
blame on the Mafia, and Garrison was part of the Mafia. Garrison took
all the information that Chandler was providing to him, and when he had
all that information, he didn’t do anything against the Mafia. That is when
he broke up with Chandler.
< ——-
To me, one of the most incredible things is how people sometimes cast
blame on innocent people. Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner were able to
carry that movie, /FK, by putting the blame on an innocent man like Clay
Shaw.
I had the opportunity to meet Clay Shaw after he had been indicted
by Garrison. I was invited to the reception he had in his house after he
was acquitted of all charges by the grand jury in less than three hours.
The man was a gentleman. I don’ care if he was gay or not gay—that
is his personal decision—but this man was a gentleman. This man was
recognized by a lot of ambassadors and very influential people all over the
world, and Garrison was able to blame an innocent man.
When Oliver Stone came to New Orleans with Kevin Costner, they
invited me to his hotel; they wanted me to help them with the movie.
When Oliver Stone finished explaining his movie to me, I told him, “You
are going to do terrible damage to the young people of the United States,
because what you are saying in that movie is wrong. You are not portray-
ing the truth in that movie.” He told me, “Carlos, you have to realize that
I am not doing a documentary, that I am doing a movie. In a movie, I have
the latitude of expanding the truth a little bit.”
I told him, “I don’t want to cooperate with you,” and I walked out of
that room. Kevin Costner was running after me into the elevator, asking
me to reconsider. I said, “No. The damage this will do to the American
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people is terrible: The people will think that what he’s saying in the movie
is true, and it is not true.”
One person who told me what was going on after the Garrison inves-
tigation was Oriana Fallaci. She interviewed me over at Casa Roca at that
time and told me, “Carlos, when this trial is finished, a movie will be made
about this. If Garrison wins, a movie will be made about how good he was.
If he loses, a movie will be made about how much of an idiot he was.” But
she was wrong. He lost, and a movie was made about how good he was.
e i
History changed when Lee Harvey Oswald fired those three shots in Dallas
on November 22, 1963—not only the history of Cuba but also the history
of the United States and the history of the world. If Lee Harvey Oswald was
alive today, he would be very happy to see the way the United States is going.
I met the president of Guatemala, Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes. He was
president of Guatemala during the Bay of Pigs invasion. I met him one
time at a dinner in New Orleans, and he was sat next to me. He wanted
me to tell him about Lee Harvey Oswald and my encounter with Oswald.
I said, “I will tell you that if you tell me something about the Bay of Pigs
that I am not aware of.”
He told me, “One month before the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy sent an
emissary to Guatemala, telling me to dismantle the camps, because the
invasion was not going forward. I sent a friend of mine to Washington |
to give my response to Kennedy.” Ydigoras said that when my friend met
Kennedy, he told him what Ydigoras said: that that was the right time to
get rid of Castro.
“If we don’t get rid of Castro now, Castro is going to get rid of us.”
Fuentes told me that my friend Alajhos said that at that moment Ken-
nedy had started moving in his rocking chair and after a few minutes told
him, “OK, tell your president he is right, that I am sorry that I am sur-
rounded by fediches.” That was the word Ydigoras Fuentes used. Fediches
are bad advisors, people who are bringing you only the bad news about a
situation—and so the invasion would go.
Two of the leaders of the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy and Anastasio Somoza,
were both killed by Castro's people. One in Dallas, Texas, and the other in
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CARLOS BRINGUIER
Asunción, Paraguay, by
another Castro sympathizer,
a communist Argentinean
trained in Cuba and sent to
Paraguay to kill President
Somoza. I believe that one
of the reasons that President
Kennedy and even Bobby
Kennedy were killed was
because of Castro.
Sirhan Sirhan was a
follower of Fidel Castro
too. Sirhan Sirhan was
identified as attending a meeting that was for Castro, where he had a
confrontation with a Cuban exile also. I invited Bobby Kennedy to come
to New Orleans during that campaign, and he sent me a letter promising
that in the future he would be coming and meeting with us here.
I once presented one of my books, Operation Judas, in Miami. After
the presentation, I saw a man in the first row. About two weeks before I
went to Miami, I had seen his picture in a book he wrote.
After the presentation, this man came to me and asked, “Do you
know who I am?” i
I said, “Yes, you are Felix Rodriguez. You are the man who cut Che
Guevara in Bolivia.”
He said, “Yes.”
I said, “I saw your picture in the book you wrote.”
He said, “I want to tell you that I was a friend of Bobby Kennedy and
that everything you said in your book is the truth.”
I don't have any doubt in my mind that if Bobby Kennedy had become
president of the United States, he would have gotten rid of the man who
had killed his brother. So Bobby Kennedy could not be allowed to become
president of the United States; that is one of the reasons Bobby Kennedy
was also assassinated.
One of the other victims of Fidel Castro, in my opinion, was Martin
Luther King. Martin Luther King was not a Communist. Martin Luther
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WHERE WERE You?
King was looking, for the advancement of colored people in the United
States. Martin Luther King had been invited to Cuba several times, but
he refused to go to Cuba and give his seal of approval to the dictator-
ship of Fidel Castro. Martin Luther King didn’t want to be part of the
revolution that Castro wanted to come inside the United States. He was
a friend of the Kennedys. In my opinion, that is one of the reasons he was
also killed, in order for the Communists to take over the black movement
in the United States.
i aie”
I am glad I had the encounter with Oswald to a certain extent, because
I believe I was in God’s hands. I believe that gave me the opportunity to
destroy the myth that Kennedy was killed by right-wingers or conserva-
tives or whatever—because I was there; I know what happened.
In regard to Garrison, I was glad to be there too, because I believe |
confronted him. I believe he respected me, and he didnt want to confront
me because he knew that I knew more about the assassination than he
knew. I have read the twenty-six volumes of the Warren Commission.
Every time Garrison was saying something on television in New Orleans,
the television station would interview me after that, and I was saying,
“What the district attorney said is not true because what happened was
this, this, and this.” Garrison would change everything.
I feel bad that thing happened to me, though, because as this was
happening we lost a little girl. My wife was pregnant during the Garrison
investigation. At one point I was thinking that Garrison was going to
arrest me at any minute, so I sent her with the kids to her family in Bue-
nos Aires—I didn’t want the kids to be present if they arrested me. When
eventually I thought Garrison was not going to move against me, I called
her. She came back to the United States. Then she lost the kid. We lost
that kid when she was seven months pregnant, and I believe we lost that
kid because of the Garrison investigation. She was crying every night; she
was very upset with the situation, and she was very afraid.
Unfortunately that is not what Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner think
about the assassination.
Richard Reeves
Political biographer and news columnist Richard Reeves was a twenty-
six-year-old reporter for the Newark News in 1963. An award-winning
author, primarily writing on American politics, he teaches at the Uni-
versity of Southern California.
don't think he was prepared, but I don’t think anyone ever has been. The
job is sui generis, and they make of it what they can. They have much
less room for movement than I had imagined. John Kennedy obviously
was well read in history and thought about it. All the sickness he had had
as a kid, he read almost everything he could. He, like every other person
Ive ever talked to who ran for president—Lyndon Johnson and Adlai
Stevenson were his real rivals at that time—had the answer, “Hell, if they
can do it, I can do it.” Then they get there. They come into this building
that has been emptied out, every paper is gone, everything is white and
what-not, and it’s really a “What do I do now?” situation.
He did have, with some exceptions, the best and the brightest for
him. He was a very tough guy. Politicians at that level have to be ruthless,
and they have to cut away the people who helped them along the way but
are no longer useful. Being rich probably helped in that. He saw them as
servants, and he, more than other presidents I’ve looked at, made his own
decisions in secret.
He organized the White House as a spoke-and-wheel, with himself
as the hub and the spokes leading out to other people. No one in there
ever felt fully secure, because they didn’t know what he was saying to
other people. He didn't do things as if it were a group. He talked about
this himself. He wanted to keep total control over what he was doing. He
did that by dealing along to spokes of that wheel.
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WHERE WERE You?
He was used to doing what other
presidents often had to learn to do—
not to do anything himself that could be
done by someone else. He was very used
to people waiting on him. Some days he
would change his shirts five times a day
with someone else, Bobby or some stiff,
holding it out. You talk about him being
surprised about small things—he was
stunned to find out that Ben Bradlee
would wear shirts for two days in a row.
That was totally alien to him. He lived
in a world where there were lawyers,
maids, cleaners, doctors, everything you
needed, in that same kind of organization around you. Eisenhower had
the same kind of treatment, though he didn’t have the money, because of
his rank. You have to know that to be president. You can't go in there like
Jimmy Carter and think it’s like everything else. It’s not like everything
else. Rich people know that.
The fists were closed, but they were often swung at each other, and
that was the way Kennedy wanted it. He wanted them to be compet-
ing against each other with only him knowing what the competition was
really about. Jackie Kennedy’s biggest worry was really about her children |
being exploited. As far as John Kennedy was concerned, there was a whole
world out there to be exploited, including these two beautiful children.
When her car pulled out of the driveway at the White House, he often
grabbed a phone, called a photographer, and said, “She’s gone, you can
come over and take pictures.” Of course when they got there, the kids
were there, and some of those images are now indelible in our view.
If nothing else, John Kennedy taught us how to be postwar rich Amer-
icans, how to dress—he dressed differently—how to cut hair, what was
important. Although he didn’t think things like opera and the symphony
were important, he thought it was important that Americans did because
we had become a new people. Before World War II, before the Gl Bill,
people in this country lived very limited lives. After the war, for the first
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RicHARD REEVES
time many Americans—even if
with guns in their hands—had Kennedy taught us
seen the world. They recognized ;
and he certainly recognized that how to be p ostwar rich
we were going to be the leaderof Americans.
the world; he was going to lead
by example, which was an easy
thing for him to do.
Conservative Republicans of course like to say that we probably could
have been rougher on Kennedy, but he couldnt have been rougher on
us because one of the Kennedy policies, strategies, tactics, was that all
good news would come from the White House. Any bad news would
be announced by the Agriculture Department, the Labor Department,
or someone else. The press caught on to that—the action wasn’t out in
the agencies anymore; the action was all centralized in the White House.
Kennedy was controlling it, and we really had no choice but to play the
game his way. We were played very skillfully, and it wasn't because of any
love affair between us and the Kennedys.
What we liked about the Kennedys was: ‘They were good copy. They
were a good story. We didn't think they were better than other people, but
they were a hell of a lot more interesting than other people. That was part
of a buildup. The man will live forever because he was a cultural’icon. He
was a competent politician who did some good things and some bad, but
the fact of the matter is he changed the way Americans thought of them-
selves. The president was in our living room now, and so were some of
the troubles of the world, particularly civil rights. We talk of the Internet
today and all of that or Gutenberg and the press. ‘The arrival of television
was like that. It changed [the world]. Nothing was ever the same, and he
understood it better than we did.
When it came to the press, he was not above picking up the phone
personally and calling the press lords or even columnists and chewing
them out or asking them for something—including calling the publisher
of the New York Times when the Times’ Tad Szulz had sniffed out what
was going on in Cuba, though it wasnt as big a secret as we think of it
now. Kennedy did pick up the phone, called the Times, and said, “How
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WHERE WERE You?
are you going to*handle this?” To a certain extent he edited it, particularly
taking out the fact that we had the time table—we at the Times had the
time table. We knew what was happening.
Other stories were held as they are today because the president called
and said, “It’s in the interest of national security.” The guy who took the
most beating from him, who was one of the best reporters covering him,
was Hugh Sidey of Time. Kennedy thought, This is just free television.
When he was once asked during the campaign what was the most impor-
tant medium in the country, he said Time magazine because it’s all over
the world, and people think it represents the government. Time obviously
covered him with their best man, Hugh Sidey, but Sidey woke up many
unpleasant mornings with Kennedy screaming at him—the president
screaming at a reporter. How do we react when that happens? We want
to dive under the bed. We know our place, but he knew his place too and
was willing to use it. He didn’t talk to Sidey for weeks because Sidey cited
the fact that his picture, he didn't know why, was in Gentlemans Quarterly.
Kennedy called him up and said, “That’s a homosexual magazine. You're
going to ruin me. Why are you doing this? Who's making you do this to
us?” Of course no one was making them do it. They were covering what
happened in front of them. The president of the United States was on the
cover of GQ, and that was it. That was a story.
Rich people grow up with long driveways, with lawyers to buy their
way out of situations. He had been bought out of woman situations with .-
payoffs since he was a teenager. That’s the way his old man, Joe Kennedy,
handled his own life and handled his son’s life. It wasn’t a situation like
Gary Hart, who got caught at it; the Miami Herald was sitting on his
stoop when he was inside for a weekend with a young lady named Donna
Rice. We couldn't sit on the Kennedy stoop. We couldn't sit at the White
House. People came in cars; Marilyn Monroe came to the Carlyle. Pm
going to plead innocent here because I worked for a small paper in the
country at that time, but guys protecting guys and “guys will be guys”
was a very large part of it. Even if we felt like reporting it, I don't think
our editors would have run it. It was still considered private business. We
didn’t know enough about it, and who among us was going to be the first
to throw a stone? We were afraid.
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RicHARD REEVES
He was a very sick man, and one of the reasons he was so reckless
and careless was that he always expected to die young—he lived life as a
race against boredom. But the medical thing—someone could get elected
with a woman thing today, and have been. But someone with the health
profile that John Kennedy had would not be elected. Had he run in times
where medical records were more accessible, where the reporters covering
it were doctors like Larry Altman at the Times and whatnot ... But they
lied, they lied, they lied. One statement after another during the cam-
paign; doctors would issue statements that there was nothing wrong with
him. Whenever there seemed to be [something wrong], none of us knew.
To my knowledge, there were only two or three pictures ever taken of him
on crutches, and he was on crutches a good deal of the time. I don't think
they were published at the time.
~—li lie
I don't know that he learned from what they [his military leaders and cabinet]
did. What he did was stand fast in what he believed. The Bay of Pigs wasn't
much compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis, and here there were two men
who could conceivably destroy each other and a lot of each other’s world.
His genius, and it was genius, was a great piece of leadership in the
Cuban Missile Crisis, since he was the only guy who understood that
Khrushchev was in an equally precarious position and wanted an out just
as much as Kennedy did. Khrushchev had hoped to sneak all the missiles
in and then announce it—but he didn’t. We caught him at it. At that
moment, both of them were the same. The advisors for both were saying,
“Go get em. Push the button. Push the button.” Both of them—seasoned
politicians both of them, different systems but both politicians—knew it
was disastrous and that they had to find a minimum path out of the thing.
It was Khrushchev who gambled and lost.
There are two fine moments I think in the Kennedy presidency. One,
which was a kind of extended moment, he was the first president to come
to office when the United States could be invaded, the first time since
1812. Now with ballistic missiles, we could be reached by an enemy. The
world was in better shape, closer to peace when he died than when he
came in, which I think was a great achievement.
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WHERE WERE You?
He was the first president to come to office when the
United States could be invaded, the first time since
1812.
These two guys came to power knowing their own countries could
be destroyed. Kennedy badly underrated Khrushchev; he also was taking
a lot of amphetamines at that point in his life—he had an outside doc-
tor, Dr. [Max] Jacobson, who was shooting him up. That probably helped
his energy; it probably didn't help his judgment. But what did him in
was that John Kennedy lied more than a bit about his growing up and
his development. One of the things on his résumé was that he had been
at the London School of Economics and that Harold Laski, the Marx-
ist scholar, had been his mentor. Everyone around him who really didn't
know very much about Communism thought: “He really knows about the
dialectic. He knows how to deal with these people.” Well, the truth is, he
never went to the London School of Economics. He got sick; he stayed
home. He thought he could win on charm, like many other politicians.
They always believe they’ll prevail one on one. He believed that. But it
didn’t happen in Vienna, and he was just crushed by it. He said, as we
know now, to Scotty Reston, “We're going to have to stand up to them
someplace because they think I’m a weak man, and I know the place.”
Reston said, “What’s the place?” And he said, “Vietnam.”
It was very rough. One of the things he did when he came out [to
Vienna] was to meet first with Scotty Reston in a room; it had been
arranged in advance. Reston, the Washington bureau chief of the New
York Times and probably the most powerful journalist of his generation,
was waiting for Kennedy in a side.room. Kennedy came in—he was car-
rying a hat, which was unusual for him—and he slumped onto a couch
and put the hat down over his face. Reston asked, “How was it?” He
said, “Worst thing in my life. I’m going to have to spend a lot of time
undoing that.” What happened was that Kennedy obviously was a very
rational fellow, but he had no experience at this level. Khrushchev did,
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RICHARD REEVES
and Khrushchev was, by nature, a thug—a likable thug, a funny guy, but
he never let Kennedy get off the dime. Kennedy would say, “Why don't
we do this?” and Khrushchev would jump on him, saying: “Do this with
you after you put the missiles in so-and-so, and you did this, and you're
oppressing that. You're the enemy; you're the one trying to start a war.
Why should we deal with you? Why should we deal with any of you? You
sent spy planes over.”
It went on and on and on, and Kennedy wasn't used to being talked
to that way. Beyond that, he was never able to pull himself together to
mount an effective defense. One, he didn’t really know much about Com-
munism and Marxism; two, he was drugged up. He had been shot up
with amphetamines by Dr. Jacobson for the pain, the huge pain he had in
his back. What effect that had on his thinking and his ability to defend
himself and the rest of us, we don't know for sure, but obviously it had an
eec
The other great achievement, which he doesnt get as much credit for
from many people, is that America was being torn apart by a civil war,
something it didn’t want. He didn’t want to deal with civil rights above
all, but young blacks in places like South Carolina were listening to his
words about doing and being and freedom. He meant those for Eastern
European audiences, but it worked in Greenville, South Carolina.
Kennedy had been asking, “Why is this happening? Stop this.” He
told Harris Wofford, his civil rights adviser, “Get your damn people off
those buses,” and Wofford said, “It’s too late for that,” and it was too late
for that. George Reedy, Johnson's press secretary, in a memo to Johnson,
who then passed it on to Sorensen, said, “They’re doing it because of you,
“Were going to have to stand up to them someplace
because they think Im a weak man, and I know the
place.” Reston said, “Whats the place?” And he said,
“Vietnam.”
ara
WHERE WERE You?
and this is going on because both sides, the Southerners in Congress, the
white Southern establishment, and the black kids think you're on their
side. The politicians think you're just doing this for black votes; the blacks
think this is the revolution. Until they know which side you're on, this is
going to continue and get worse and worse.”
During the troubles at the Universities of Mississippi and Alabama,
he went on television, gave one of the great speeches—almost without
notes—in American history, in which he took the side of the minority,
which is no small thing in a democracy. He said, “This is not a regional
question, this is not a political question, this is a moral question. What
kind of people are we, and are we the kind of people who are going to
continually oppress and suppress some of us because they're of a different
color? After all, who among us, given a choice, would choose to be black?”
That was almost as great an achievement as the fact that missiles
werent fired, that the president of the United States stood with a minor-
ity. At that point it almost didnt matter what he did, because then the
black people took over, white civil rights workers took over, and we were
a better country for it.
I was a reporter for the Newark News when the phone rang, and an edi-
tor said, “The president’s been shot; get down to the office,” which was in
Morristown. I went down there, and I had this surreal scene where the .
first other door I saw opening at Ten Park Square, an office building in
Morristown, belonged to Ray Manahan, the chairman of the Democratic
Party and the mayor of Morristown. | walked in to talk to him about it.
His window was being cleaned. I was just picking up quotes they might
or might not use. His window was being washed, and there was a guy out
there with the belt and whatnot, laughing and smiling at us. We were
practically in tears, and I thought, Tm looking at the only man in the coun-
try, the guy out there, the window washer, who doesn't know what just hap-
pened to America. What happened to America was we lost our innocence.
As the great Mary McGrory said to Pat Moynihan, “We'll never laugh
again.” And Pat said, “We'll laugh again; we'll never be innocent again.”
It changed the country, and Kennedy is partly to blame for all that. If
172
RicHARD REEVES
there were another negative, it was that the Kennedys drove this aura of
assassination that was in the air in the early 60s: Patrice Lumumba, the
leader of the Congo, had been assassinated just before Kennedy became
president. Trujillo was assassinated in the Dominican Republic with help
from the CIA and American weapons, and as we knew, maybe even then,
there was plot after plot to try to kill Castro.
It never entered our minds—I don't know if it entered Kennedy’s—
that the most vulnerable leader in the world was the American president.
He was the least protected, particularly in those days, much less than
today. Maybe it was inevitable that some screwball—in this case, with a
gripe about Cuba, which we were pushing around—would try to get the
president. I don't believe in any conspiracy theories on the president. I
think Oswald killed him. He was nuts. He had a cause, Cuba, and he got
lucky; and we all got unlucky and were never the same.
It was like lightning. I think that Vietnam and civil rights were what
made young people lose faith in the credibility of their leaders. The people
who ran to conspiracy theories are a different breed of cat. The conspiracy
to them is more important than the event and its aftermath. I would put
it down not to the Warren Commission but to public officials who lied
to us that changed us. Public officials lied and lied to us about the war in
Vietnam; that changed us as journalists, but it also changed citizens as
people with faith in their system, their country, and their leaders.
~ae, —a
There had been hundreds of books obviously, but in the end only two
of them counted. A lot of them had to do with women, with attacks
or defenses of his record. I had just finished reading a book called The
Emperor by Ryszard Kapuscinski, the Polish writer, about the fall of Haile
Selassie. It was this marvelous picture of talking to everyone around a
major figure and figuring out from that what he was like.
I found myself thinking—I was living in Paris at the time—what did
this seem like to Selassie? I didn’t know anything about Ethiopia or emper-
ors, and I thought I could do a book like this. I’ve been around the White
House enough. I can do a book about this, about how life looks to an Amer-
ican president. I picked Kennedy because the two pillars of Kennedyana
WHERE WERE You?
really were Schlesing-
Under our system, the presidency ers and Sorensens
, $ books, and it was
is really an act of faith on how w een ter
the president will handle situa- Things had changed;
: ) people had changed.
tions that havent yet happened. e iss
though all these other
books were out there,
there was kind of an open field to try to cover him minute by minute, day
by day—to know what was on his desk every day, to know what he said
before he got to that desk and that kind of thing.
I was learning things. I learned big lessons, but they didnt come
immediately, because immediately I was thinking about compiling mate-
rial and building it up. The big thing that surprised me, and surprises
me to this day, is how reactive the presidency is as a job. The campaign
doesn’t matter; in some ways the person himself doesn't matter. Under our
system, the presidency is really an act of faith on how the president will
handle situations that havent yet happened. I’m sure Kennedy realized
long before I did, since only thirty-five or forty guys really know what
it’s like to be president: You're constantly reacting to events you had no
control over.
We would’ve eventually had a counterculture movement, but maybe ©
“eventually” is fifty years. I do think he would’ve begun to cut back on
Vietnam or at least assure young people. Young people were rioting
because they were being drafted not because they developed a political
ideology. In the beginning it was self-interest, and it became the ’60s.
John Kennedy came to office when people wore hats and three-button
suits, and he left when they were tie-dying—well, they werent yet, but
because of his influence they ended up tie-dying—I™-shirts and things.
Because of the way he lived—glamorously, recklessly—we all took more
chances.
I hate to say this, but I think it will turn out that Reagan, in politi-
cal terms, will have been a more significant president. John Kennedy was
a very good president and may have been on the edge of becoming a
174
RIcHARD REEVES
great president, although
great presidents, at least
in my lexicon, are created
by the events they have
to face. Suddenly an oil
tig blows up and fills the
Gulf of Mexico with oil.
You cant anticipate that,
but you have to respond to
it. There were three out of
four with Kennedy. He did
a very good job in tamping
down—and might have
been on the verge of doing more than that—the rhetoric of the Cold War,
which was much stronger than young people today understand. People
talked about bombing each other all the time. But the relationship with
the Soviet Union was better and less dangerous when he left than when
he came in. He took the moral stand on civil rights, even though the
worst people in it—the worst segregationists and bigots—were in his own
party, the Southerners in the Democratic Party. He chose the minority
over them, which was important. He brought out the best of us in many
ways, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, and it could be argued the only
thing a president can do in this great democracy is to bring out the best
or the worst in the American people. Richard Nixon failed because he
brought out the worst.
The fourth thing, which is a negative to me, is that he got us into
Vietnam—not Johnson, not Nixon. Once Diem was assassinated, with his
permission we owned Vietnam, and we went through that pathetic group
of generals who only wanted to steal. I dont know when he would’ve
pulled out. He would’ve pulled out before Johnson, but he had a failing
as a leader, which cost him in Vietnam: When things went wrong, Ken-
nedy tended to think it meant we had the wrong guy in charge, so let’s
put a new guy in and see until we get to the right one. I don't think that’s
a valid assumption, particularly for someone who controls as many people
in power as a president of the United States. Vietnam is the black mark
u
WHERE WERE You?
on his record. With weaponry and civil rights, it verged on greatness. All
in all, he was pretty good, and he was better at the end because he had
some experience. He had much more sense of what he could do and what
he couldn't do.
So was he a great president? I don’t think so. He belongs in the near-
great category—the best one-term president since James Polk.
Pat Buchanan
In 1963, native Virginian Patrick Buchanan was a twenty-five-year-old
editorial writer for the St. Louis Globe Dispatch. He left to work in Rich-
ard Nixon’s New York law firm and soon transitioned to campaign advi-
sor when Nixon began his quest for the presidency. Buchanan served as
an advisor in the White House under Nixon as well as Ford and Reagan.
With Tom Braden he founded the influential CNN program Crossfire in
1982. In 2000 Buchanan ran as the Reform Party’s presidential can-
didate; he continues to write and appear as a conservative analyst on
MSNBC.
ack in 1958 I was down in Fort Lauderdale, and my girlfriend and my
brother and his girlfriend were there. My father had been an accoun-
tant for a very rich man, Page Hufty. Page Lee Hufty was his daughter,
and there was Alex Hufty, who was getting married. Alex said, “Why
don’t you guys go up and represent me at the wedding,” so we went to the
reception, and I will never forget it: In through the door at the reception
comes John F. Kennedy, looking like a million bucks. My brother said,
“Isnt that Bobby Kennedy?” I said, “No, that’s Jack Kennedy, the sena-
tor.” He came through with tremendous charisma, immensely attractive,
a tremendously likable individual, and a new-generation politician. He
really had it.
When I was at journalism school, we were sent down to DC for
what’s called field observation week. We went to the White House one
day, the Congress another day, and we got to go to the president’s press
conference—that was a press conference right after, I believe, John Glenn
had come back from orbiting the Earth three times. ‘This guy from the
17
WHERE WERE You?
Daily News got up
and said, “Mr. Presi-
dent, the Daily News
has recommended that
there be a holiday for
school kids when John
Glenn—comes to the
White House,” and
Kennedy said, “You
know, this administra-
tion has always fol-
lowed the policy of the Washington Daily News. There’ll be a holiday!” That
was the charisma and the likability of him.
In St. Louis, we didn’t have TVs in our offices or anything. There
was one office, a side office, and we watched television there right off
the newsroom. We all got together and watched his press conferences. I
watched every one of them when they were televised, and they all were.
We went in there, and, even if you disagreed with the guy, you had to come
away admiring him. Youd say, “The Democrats have really got a candi-
date. They’ve really got a leader, and we've got to get our own candidate.”
When I became an editorial writer in St. Louis, which was around
August 1962, we were very critical of Kennedy, but we were very support-
ive of his actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis. We condemned him for the .
murder of [president of South Vietnam] Diem; we felt the administration
had had a hand in that. They were in some way complicit with that, and
that was appalling. We disagreed with him on a number of issues, but
I supported Kennedy’s tax cuts in 1962. The rest of the editorial board
didn’t.
On civil rights, it was our feeling that Jack Kennedy couldnt get any-
thing done. He wasn't a terribly effective president in dealing with Con-
gress. I’ll tell you what, though: We supported Jack Kennedy, and I wrote
editorials about the showdown with Ross Barnett, who was the governor
of Mississippi. Very soon after I joined the editorial page, in October
1962, Governor Barnett basically tried to block the entrance of black
students, specifically James Meredith, to the University of Mississippi. I
178
Par BUCHANAN
wrote an editorial saying, “Governor Barnett says he’s willing to go to jail,
and that’s exactly where they ought to put him.” We supported Kennedy
and the courts and everything they did against Governor Wallace as well
in June 1963. What we were against basically was folks from the north
going down south, but we were pro law and order up and down the line,
whether it was demonstrators on one side or governors on the other.
=, ——
What was it Harold MacMillan said? He came back from a visit to
Washington and said, “Ihe Kennedys remind me of the Borgias tak-
ing over a somewhat respectable, small northern Italian town.” ‘There’s
a great deal of truth to it. These were tough, somewhat ruthless politi-
cians. Jack Kennedy was wiretapping the steel executives. Jack Kennedy
ordered the wiretaps on Dr. King. Bobby Kennedy told Hoover to go
ahead and do it. These were tough customers. Jack Kennedy used to joke
about how his father told him, “Don’t buy one more vote than you have
to in West Virginia. Pll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide.”
That’s the way they were. They were tough, irreverent politicians, and
all three of them, Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther
King, wouldn't be in the pantheon they’re in today had they not died the
way they did, by assassins’ bullets.
Jack Kennedy was admired at the Buchanan dinner table arid by my
father, who said, “We've got two good patriots running now.” He wouldn't
have said that in Trumans and
FDR's day, but there was an admi-
ration for Kennedy and for Richard Harold MacMillan
Nixon. I preferred Richard Nixon, said, “The Kennedys
and I think my father did too. We .
couldn't vote in those days. remind me of the
But Id carried Richard Nixon's Borgias taking over a
golf bag in Burning Tree Country
Club, and we had watched him
much more closely than we had small northern
Kennedy, so I would say most of
us preferred Richard Nixon. When
somewhat respectable,
Italian town.”
179
WHERE WERE You?
Kennedy used to joke about how his father told him,
“Don't buy one more vote than you have to in West
Virginia. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a
landslide.”
he lost, there wasn't great apprehension of what Kennedy was going to
do. Arthur Schlesinger wrote Kennedy or Nixon: Does It Make a Differ-
ence? because the two of them seemed to agree on everything except Cuba,
where Kennedy was tougher, and Quemoy and Matsu, where Nixon was
tougher. There wasn't this dramatic difference, the way there was in the
1940s, with those candidates. We felt that either one of these would be a
good man and a good president. It was a new generation, and Jack Ken-
nedy wasn't a flaming liberal in our judgment. He was no Adlai Stevenson.
We were glad to see Stevenson out and Kennedy in. Kennedy was a cold
warrior. He was a tough customer. Back in the ’40s, some of his statements
about FDR and the loss of China sounded tougher than Richard Nixon.
Nixon had great respect for Kennedy. He had admiration for Ken-
nedy. I don’t believe I ever heard him really be derogatory about Kennedy
at all. They had certainly been friends during the ’40s. They had traveled
together to debate up in Pennsylvania. Joe Kennedy had given money to .
Nixon’s campaign. Nixon had liked Jack Kennedy. But whenever you go
through a campaign, you can start off liking the fellow, but by the end
you've got confessional material in your mind about what you think ought
to be done to that guy.
We heard these stories about Kennedy when I was in St. Louis, but
I would say, “Look, I don't believe this stuff. This cant be true.” There was
sort of an unwritten rule among journalists in those days that you just
didn’t write about those things. But I do believe this: If Jack Kennedy
had lived, and had he won the election in 1964—which I think he would
have—by ’66 and 67, with all the assaults on the establishment and the
way journalism changed, an awful lot of that would have come out. It
would have been massively destructive to his reputation. John F. Kennedy
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Pat BUCHANAN
is a mythological figure today because of the manner in which he died
and the pageantry of his funeral. But if he had lived, there would be no
Kennedy myth. There would be no Camelot.
i —i-
On November 22, 1963, I had just finished writing a major weekend
article of two thousand words for the Sz Louis Globe Democrat, saying,
“Goldwater is going to win this nomination; I dont care what the other
folks say.” It was around noon in St. Louis. Then word came over the AP
or UPI wire, and there was just a bustle. We all rushed into the room
where the only TV sat, right off the newsroom. We sat and watched, and
some of the women in the newsroom were crying, openly crying.
It was really appalling. We watched for most of the afternoon, and
we sat around and talked. The publisher wrote the editorial on Jack Ken-
nedy’s death. He was very conservative, but it was a good editorial. He put
black lines on all the columns on the front page. I went back and took the
piece I had written and threw it out. I said, “It’s irrelevant now. ‘This is a
new world.” My friend Denny Walsh and I saw the killing of Oswald a
couple of days later, and then we watched that funeral.
That period, all of what went on, really made a tremendous impres-
sion on the heart and soul of the country and every individual here. You're
never going to forget that. Those are the hours and those are the days that
immortalized Jack Kennedy and created the great myth of today.
It was a dramatic change [in America], and I was appalled. It was a
horrible thing. But the editorial editor—he was an old fellow, Hamilton
Thornton—he said, “You know, this has happened, but Johnson's liable to
be a better president.”
But I was just taken by it, as I think young people were at that time.
Kennedy had just changed
the whole world. I was part
of the Goldwater movement, If he had lived, there would
and that suffered a crippling
blow the day Jack Kennedy
was shot because of the blame Would be no Camelot.
or the association that this
be no Kennedy myth. There
WHERE WERE You?
was Dallas, the right-wing
atmosphere, and all the rest
of it. It took a lot of the fun
and joy and joie de vivre out
of politics.
The Kennedy assassina-
tion is a marker of a period.
The Eisenhower and Kennedy
era should be put together
as almost an era of good
feeling after the Truman-
McCarthy period and before
the Johnson-Nixon period,
and the death of Jack Kennedy was an exclamation point at the end of that
time period. While Johnson had great successes from his presidency all the
way through 1974, Richard Nixons resignation from office really was a time
of turmoil, hatred, and division in America; it poisoned our politics for a
long time—and Jack Kennedy is on the far side of that. He's back in the
good old days, if you will, and what followed was quite an incredible period
and very rough.
e ——ie
I don't believe the conspiracy theories. I tend to believe the Warren Com-.
mission. I believe Oswald fired the three shots. He had already attempted
to kill General Walker. He was a Castro-ite. He was a radical. He'd been
over in the Soviet Union. There was all the talk about the grassy knoll, but
I never really believed it, and I don’t think there is as much belief on the
conservative side, or even on what you might call the radical right side, in
the conspiracy against President Kennedy. I was not as conversant with
that as some of the theories you heard on the other side . . . because why
would they do it? All the talk later on about the New Orleans crowd down
there and all that, I’d leave that to Kevin Costner. I discredit it. ’'ve seen the
movies, I’ve seen all the material, and I believe Oswald acted alone.
On Vietnam, what concerned us was what happened to President
Diem; it was impossible or difficult for some of us to believe this could
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Par BUCHANAN
have taken place without the complicity of the government of the United
States. Jack Kennedy himself had talked about “personnel changes,” and
we heard reports that when Kennedy got word that not only was Diem
overthrown but that he'd been murdered along with his brother in that
armored personnel carrier, he got up, ashen-faced, and left the room.
If Jack Kennedy had not died the way he did, if he had lived, if there
had been no assassination, he would have gone through the same hell that
Lyndon Johnson did—maybe worse. George Wallace had announced for
the Democratic nomination several days before Kennedy died, and Ken-
nedy would have been on the ballot in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Mary-
land, where Wallace did extraordinarily well. Without Lyndon Johnson
in office, Wallace would have torn Kennedy up badly. We would have still
gotten the nomination for Barry Goldwater. Goldwater would have been
beaten by Kennedy, probably by ten points rather than twenty, but Jack
Kennedy would have continued down the road into Vietnam, which was
a very popular war in 1963 right on through 1964. His political end might
have been as bad as Lyndon Johnson’s, if not worse.
Kennedy was a good president. ‘Ihe Cuban Missile Crisis was han-
dled correctly—even if he did give away the Thor and Jupiter missiles in
Turkey and Italy and even if he did agree not to invade Cuba—because
we really were there on the threshold of a possible mistake that could
have led to nuclear war and the destruction of an awful lot of what we all
love. That was handled statesmanlike, and he deserves permanent credit
for that.
But do I think he’s a great president? No, I don't think he’s one of
the greats. If you look at his domestic achievements, Lyndon Johnson's
far exceed what he did. Kennedy got the Trade Expansion Act. He wasn’t
a strong president legislatively. He didn't get any civil rights bill. What
Kennedy is famous for is that he has become an enormously inspirational
figure in history for young people, for generation after generation. But
again, that’s got to do with the way the man died. Richard Nixon felt
that he was always held to a more severe and harsh standard than the
establishment ever held Jack Kennedy or Bobby Kennedy to, and I think
he was right in that. I do think there was a measure of real resentment at
how he was treated compared to what others got away with.
183
Pad Gannon
A twenty-year-old student at Georgetown University in 1963, Frank
Gannon regularly played piano for President Kennedy. In the early sev-
enties he worked as an intern to Donald Rumsfeld in the Nixon White
House. With then-girlfriend Diane Sawyer, he helped organize Nixon’s
memoir, RN, and later became a conservative fundraiser in New York.
In 1982 Gannon began segment-producing The David Letterman Show
and videotaping interviews with Nixon, some of which proved too frank
for public consumption. Gannon now runs the New Nixon website and
the Richard Nixon Foundation blog.
was a senior at Georgetown. For the last couple of years, I had worked
my way through school by bartending and playing piano at 1789 in
Georgetown. I had been discovered as a piano player earlier that year by
Red Fay, the undersecretary of the Navy, who had had been President
Kennedy’s roommate at OCS at naval training. They were great friends.
When Red became the undersecretary to the Navy he started giving par-
ties aboard the secretary of the Navy’s yacht, the Sequoia. I was playing in
1789 one night, and as I walked out to thunderous applause, he tugged
my coat and asked, “Do you play for private parties?”
_ I said, “T haven't, but I would. Why not?” That was a Friday night, and
on Sunday night I was aboard the Sequoia playing for the president of the
United States. It was incredible for any number of reasons. First of all, I
was young, and suddenly you're with a president and the whole panoply of
it. We would board the Sequoia at the navy yard and then steam across the
Anacostia to the air naval station. One of the most vivid memories I have
is of him arriving. [his was a new level of busy, a scary level of busy that
I'd never seen—he’s in the back of the limo with a desk, and he’s signing
things and reading things as they come up. Then he’s piped aboard.
184
FRANK GANNON
The concept of the pressure he
was under was another impression I
had—the intensity, almost in some
cases near hysteria, of the people on
the boat to relax him, to make sure
he had a good time. It was quite
an experience for a young college
student.
Im guessing that I played for
him between a dozen and twenty
times. I became briefly fashionable,
because all the people who were on
the boat then hired me to play on
land for their private parties. ‘The
money I earned from that allowed me to go to graduate school in Eng-
land. Looking back, I see he was working the room. I was part of the
room, and he worked me to a tee. It’s become a cliché that when a politi-
cian talks to you, he or she makes you feel that you're the only person in
the room. That’s how I felt. He would come over. His briefers had told
him I was president of the student body, so he asked me about my cam-
paign and what the issues were. He would always come over at the begin-
ning. He would come over and ask, “How are you?” and “How are things
at school?” And before he left he would come over and say, “Thank you.”
That was the extent of our relationship.
I was the only piano player, so if it was going to be on a weekend
night, they would call in advance so I could ask the owner if I could take
off. Early that week, that week of November 20, I got a call from Red’s
office saying the president was coming back from ‘Texas. If he wasn’t too
tired, they were going to have a party that night; the Sequoia was going go
into dry dock, and the next window of opportunity would be April. Every
expectation was that it would be a go.
When I finished my noon class and walked down the street, there
was a car stopped in the middle of the street, a white Buick convertible
with the top down—it was a fairly mild day—and a growing number of
students, to which I was added, listening to the radio turned up. That was
the first news that the president had been shot. Then I went into a bar
185
WHERE WERE You?
with a television set above the bar and listened. Twenty minutes later it
was announced that he had died. It was impossible to believe. I was think-
ing that I was going to be playing for him that night, and then two nights
later I was on the forty-block line at the Capitol, waiting to walk past his
coffin. It was unimaginable.
Before Billy Joel coined the phrase, I was a piano man, and one of
the things a piano man does for his tip jar is have songs that you play for
people. Just as I believe that graphologists can tell you a little bit about
somebody from their handwriting, I think a pianologist can also tell you
something about people by their songs. I had a song for everybody, and
the president’s song, contrary to conventional wisdom, was not from
Camelot. It was from the Pulitzer Prize-winning show How to Succeed
in Business without Really Trying. It was the song “I Believe in You.” I
can see that. Robert Kennedy’s song was from Camelot, “If Ever I Would
Leave You,” which is a more brooding, melancholy, thoughtful song. Mrs.
Kennedy’s song—I only met her in April 1964, after the assassination, on
the Sequoia. I asked Red if she'd like a song. He came back about forty
minutes later and said, “She does have a song. She wants to know if you
can play ‘Me and My Shadow.”
It was a perfect storm in a perfect sense. At the time there was an
exponential rise of [household] television sets, and by 1960, 90 percent of
American homes had at least one television set. How perfect that, when
the medium was in place to bring politics, to bring the first family into
every American home, you had the most telegenic first family imaginable
in history—and not just the president but the kids. I mean, everybody
knew. Even if you weren't a Kennedy supporter, a Democrat, or a liberal,
you knew John-John; you knew Caroline. It was an invigorating, inspiring
time. Youd have to be either very cold or very unimaginative not to have
been touched by that.
I helped Nixon on the research, organizing the research, and writing the
memoirs, so it was a very interesting relationship. There’s a wonderful
handwritten letter in the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda that Kennedy
sent to Nixon when Nixon was nominated to be vice president in’52. In it |
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FRANK GANNON
he says, “I always knew youd
go far, but I didn't think youd
go quite this far this fast.”
They had been friends when
they were bookends on the
House Education and Labor
Committee in 1947 because
they were the two youngest
members. The Kennedys—
Jacqueline and John—invited
the Nixons to their wedding.
As president of the Senate,
Nixon did a number of things
that were greatly appreciated
by the Kennedys, and they
wrote numbers of letters to express that appreciation when Senator Ken-
nedy was sick and had back problems. Nixon extended votes and did
things in order to accommodate Kennedy’s problems. They were very
cordial, friendly—they were very different people and of different par-
ties—but they had a thing. When Nixon was in Europe in the late ’40s
with the Herter Committee, the two Kennedy sisters, Jean and Eunice,
were there, and Nixon went touring with them one day. There was this
kind of relationship. Joe Kennedy had sent, via Jack Kennedy, a check for
one thousand dollars to help Nixon in his House race in 1948.
I think the thing that changed it [their relationship] greatly, that was
searing for Nixon, was the’60 campaign and coming up against the politi-
cal organization—the money, the intensity, the ferocity was something. It
must have been something to be on the receiving end of it.
On November 22 Nixon was [working] at a law firm on Wall Street.
He had been in Dallas the night before and had left that morning. He
talked about how when he drove out he could see signs—some not
friendly—preparing for the president’s arrival coming from Fort Worth
that day. He got off the plane at LaGuardia, and they were driving over
the Queensboro Bridge. They stopped at a light, and someone rushed out
of the shop and said, “The president’s been shot.” The cab went to 810
187
WHERE WERE You?
Fifth Avenue, where Nixon lived, and he went up and called J. Edgar
Hoover. As he describes it, he said, “Who, Edgar, who did this?” Edgar
says, “It’s a Commonist”—that’s how he pronounced “Communist.” That
was how he found out, stopped at a traffic light on the Manhattan side of
the Queensboro Bridge.
It’s the most traumatic event for the nation, along with Vietnam, of
the latter half of the twentieth century, and I don't think weve actually
processed either of them yet. They’re still open and raw and unsettled. It
changed everybody. But it certainly changed the world for Nixon.
The Kennedy history is one thing, and historians and others for years
are going to uncover, analyze, and deconstruct his record and his person-
ality and his peccadilloes. That’s not necessarily going to be positive, but
that’s history.
The Kennedy legacy is going to be the Kennedy mythology. We like
to think we’ve grown out of mythology, but obviously it has a very long
pedigree where human beings are concerned. The Kennedy mythology is
almost archetypical—a young hero and beloved leader felled at the height
of his powers and before his time while trying to lead his people to an
exciting, challenging, noble new frontier. That’s not necessarily true, but as
long as we're still around, and I think for a very long time, that mythology
isn't going to be changed or challenged. I think that’s a good thing. That’s
certainly a powerful legacy for any president to leave.
What I think about is a card that’s still on my wall from JFK’s Navy
secretary. A couple of weeks after the assassination, I got this Christ-
mas card from Red Fay, and on the
inside he had written: “Frank, you
The Kennedy legacy is added to his happiness. Red.” So in
os “the watches of the morning,” when
Song to be the Kennedy I finally wake up and surface, if I
mythology. think about those days, that’s what
na aba
188
Kathy Fay and Paul Fay IJI
Kathy Fay and Paul Fay Il! are the children of Paul “Red” Fay Jr., one of
President Kennedy’s longest and closest friends, who served as under-
secretary and secretary of the Navy during his administration. As a
family, they spent many joyful days with the Kennedys in a variety of
settings, and JFK served as their sister Sally’s godfather. Teenagers
at the time of the president’s death, their father, who died in 2009,
told them that he knew as early as 1943 that his friend would become
president one day.
AUL FAY: My father met JFK when they were in training for PT
boats in Rhode Island. ‘They went out and played a touch football
game, and out walked this skinny kid, as my father referred to him, who
had a sweatshirt that was inside out with an “H” on the inside—not
showing obviously. All he remembered of the skinny kid who. happened
to be John Kennedy was that he was all elbows and was running into him
the whole time. He was a very difficult guy to cover. That was the first
encounter. The second encounter was in the Solomon Islands. My father
wanted to change from one PT boat to another when they were doing
maneuvers—practice, if you will. He decided to use the flag sign language
they had in the Navy, but the message he gave to Kennedy’s boat made
no sense.
KATHY FAY: I first met President Kennedy in 1959, before my
twelfth birthday, at our house in San Francisco. He came in with my
father. I dont know the reason, but we were in the living room, and Dad
said go sit next to the future possible president of the United States.
PAUL: Kathy and I were kids at the time we knew President
Kennedy, in our teens. He had a special quality about him. ‘There was
189g
WHERE WERE You?
something about President Ken-
nedy that when he was talking to
you, there was no one else in the
world he was paying attention to.
He was focused on you. He was
interested in what you had to say
in a way that was very personal,
and I have yet to meet someone
else who had that same quality
to that extent. Jackie was a very
special lady. She was very good to
me, and what people don't real-
ize is what a great sense of humor
Jackie Kennedy had. Jackie was a
very bright woman, very well read,
with a great sense of humor. All —_ 6
I know is that we knew him and a‘ - E
the way he treated us, the way we À
saw him operate with other people
and the warmth and the kindness
he showed. I never, ever sensed a
President Kennedy autographing pho-
tos for Kathy and Paul III
brute in that man. He was never that way. He was always considerate,
always thoughtful.
KATHY: We saw intimate moments with him and Jackie. I mean, I
saw them with their chaise lounges pushed together, holding hands by the
pool, and I just felt a warmth.
PAUL: It was also a different time, and the press then was made up
of all males. There were very few females in the press corps at that time.
There was a club that certain things weren't spoken about. I dont think
it just happened in the White House. I think all over Washington, DC,
from senators to congressmen—this was part of the reason you got into
office. But the man we knew, he was a remarkable, wonderful man.
KATHY: I was in Seattle with Mom and Dad and my little sister,
Sally, who is President Kennedy’s goddaughter. Dad was giving a speech
to the midshipmen, and while he was giving the speech his aide suggested
190
Katuy Fay anp Paut Fay III
that we should go shopping. We went to this big department store, and
my mother wanted to look at the antiques. I said, “Pll take Sally up to the
toy department,” because I wasn’t interested in antiques. “PI meet you
back here, Mom.” On the escalator up to the toy level, I saw one floor
where all the televisions were sold. Everybody was gathered around the
TV. I thought, I want to know whats going on over there, so I said, “Sally,
just come with me.” People were gathering and gathering; I squeezed
into the middle and looked up at the TV, and it said something like “the
president has been shot.”
It was such a foreign thing that I thought, the president of Seattle or
the president of a bank? But | was thinking, Why is it getting so much atten-
tion? Then I listened some more, and they said it was the president of the
United States. I thought, OA, hes been nicked. That's kind of news. So | said,
“Come on, Sally. We have to go find Mom.” I went racing down to the
antiques department and found my mother, and I said, “Mom, you're not
going to believe this, but the president was shot,” and she went, “What?”
I tell her, “Mom, he’s just nicked,” and this woman comes over and
says, No, my dear, it’s serious; it’s very serious.” My mother just came
sort of unglued, dropped to her knees, and started to say a prayer, and this
other woman dropped to her knees. I’m going, “Mom, I just don't believe
this.” I mean, it was just—everybody was really upset, and I was holding
on to Sally.
I was still not focusing. This is just not happening. ‘This is too weird.
So we get back into the car to go back to where we were going to meet
Dad, and on the radio it says, “The president, the thirty-fifth president
of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, has died.” My little sister
looks up and says to me, “Kathy, does that mean I don’t have a godfather
anymore?” I didn’t even want to acknowledge that.
My mother was crying, and I still was just not believing this. We get
back to the headquarters, waiting around for Dad to walk in, and my
father, who’s so expressive and always had an expression in his face—
anger or humor, warmth, love, or something—when he walked through
the door and J took one look at him, it was like there was nothing there.
He had lost his soul. That’s when I knew the president had gone, and it
was horrible, just devastating to us.
IQI
WHERE WERE You?
When he [my father] walked through the door and
I took one look at him, it was like there was nothing
there. He had lost his soul.
PAUL: I was in boarding school in New Hampshire, and that was the
weekend we bought our skis, ski hats, et cetera. They were in the audito-
rium selling us these different items, and somebody ran in and said, “The
president’s been shot.” We went into the one TV room, and that’s when I
heard about it. It was devastating.
KATHY: We attended the funeral. We also attended the very private
funeral, where we all stood in line to greet Jackie. I was there with Mom
and Dad. This was just private, where dignitaries and personal family
friends got the opportunity to say a few words to Jackie. We were stand-
ing in line, and I could see the tears running down my father’s face. But he
said to me, “Kathy, whatever you do when you see Jackie, do not cry. ” That
just increased the odds for the flow of tears. It was so upsetting. When I
had my moment with Jackie, I just lost it. I hugged her and said, “I am so
sorry,” and she hugged me for maybe ten seconds, which is a long time.
She whimpered and just held me. It was an incredible moment. It was like
she was allowed just to release with someone. I was crying, and she was
whimpering, and it was just an incredible moment, really close, that I felt
very privileged to have experienced.
Not long after I wrote her a letter.
- . Dear Jackie,
T will never forget when I first met the president. I was sitting on
his lap in San Francisco, and he was telling me about when he would
become president. He invited me ‘over to the White House. Even at
that early date, I knew it would come true. It certainly came true, but
it all went too quickly. I still to this day dont wholly believe what
happened. ‘The president to me has always been my dream man. Every
time I saw him, I thought my heart would never calm down. When
192
Katuy Fay anp Paur Fay ITI
Daddy told me to kiss him goodnight at Camp David, I shied away
with embarrassment. Now I wish I could have kissed and hugged him
a million times. I loved the president very much and always will, but
I know I could never love him as much as you do. I hope that if a crisis
ever hit our house I could carry on as majestically and beautiful as you
did. What I have just said is not nearly as much as I feel. I only know
that you and the president will always be in my mind, the greatest
first lady and president the world has ever known. I will pray for you.
Sincerely yours,
Katherine Fay
PAUL: For me, President Kennedy was somebody who was inclu-
sive as opposed to divisive. What we have today is: Everybody has very
strong beliefs. President Kennedy obviously had very strong beliefs, but
he was someone who was open to hear everybody. My father would tell
me stories where somebody extremely conservative and very Republican
would come in and meet with President Kennedy. They would walk away
maybe not agreeing with President Kennedy but knowing that they had
a fair hearing and that it was an enjoyable experience. To me, that’s his
legacy of a time when things werent so polarized. For instance, my father
campaigned for Dwight Eisenhower. My father, who was one of Ken-
nedy’s best friends, campaigned for Ike! President Kennedy understood it
because he understood my father and understood his background. He had
an understanding of people. That doesnt mean he would have changed
his beliefs for that, but it shows he was a big man and a great intellect in
my opinion. I think that was the legacy he left me: “Try not to be small,
but try to be big.”
KATHY: He wasn't judgmental at all. I think he was open to every-
one, and you could feel it when you met him. He just paid attention. He
was interested in everyone and felt everyone should have a fair shake at
life. He was a great man.
PAUL: I had conversations with my father about the Warren Com-
mission. I said, “Dad, don’t you feel that maybe the Warren Commission
was not spot-on correct, because there seems to be all this other evidence
of possible outside influences?” My father said of course he had heard of
WHERE WERE YOU?
that and read about it,
but he said he thought
the Warren Commis-
sion was correct. That
is the most I ever got
out of my father on that
subject. My father and
the majority of President
Kennedy’s best friends—
and I would even say
Bobby—accepted the
Warren Commission
and wanted to move on.
They didn’t want to dwell on it. That was his attitude, and [it was] the
same with most of his and President Kennedy’s other friends, like Chuck
Spalding. His son, Dick Spalding, is a good friend of mine. None of them
really wanted to focus on possible other conspiracies. They all wanted to
close that chapter of the book. It hurt them all so much. They just wanted
to close the chapter.
KATHY: The same with me from Dad. He said, “Kathy, if any of this
could bring him back, fine, but this Warren Commission—nothing can
bring the president back, so I don't really want to talk about it. It’s done.”
It wasn't his favorite subject at all.
PAUL: My father firmly believed that if President Kennedy had
remained president, if he'd lived, we wouldnt have gone to Vietnam. My
father was either on the Sequoia or the Honey Fitz with the president, and
a call came in. It was one of the commanders. ‘The president said, “Red, I
want you to come with me to listen to this.” We had sent some troops over
there as advisors to Vietnam, and one of the commanders wanted to have
the advisors get engaged in a firefight on the ground in Vietnam at that
time. President Kennedy told the general for every man that he heard was
engaged in that fight he would bring two soldiers back. He did not want
us to get engaged in a ground war in Vietnam, and my father, if he were
alive today, would have said categorically that President Kennedy would
have done everything he could not to have gone into a war in Vietnam.
194
Bill Daley
Son of legendary Chicago mayor Richard Daley, Bill Daley was fifteen
years old in 1963. He went on to become an attorney, bank executive,
secretary of commerce under President Clinton, and White House chief
of staff in President Obama’s first administration.
here was that Irish Catholic connection between the families. We had
different types of politics, different upbringings, but my dad saw in the
president an opportunity for America to move forward and for Irish Cath-
olics to get recognized by someone who was the best of the representatives
at the time. There were lots of Irish politicians at local levels throughout
America, but the idea of someone with John Kennedy’s background having
the chance to be president of the United States, along with the personal
connection my dad had with him, was an opportunity that my dad saw that
was unique. [hat added to the enthusiasm for the president when he ran.
My father may have had reservations early on, but I know he always
talked of the convention in ’56 when then-senator Kennedy made a run
for the vice presidency and how close he came, and how excited my dad
was to be part of trying to do that. My dad had been around for a while
and knew most of the national political players, so I don’t think he ever
thought Jack Kennedy took second place to any of the national people,
including Adlai Stevenson, who was a strong Illinois person and a very
close friend of my dad. But by the time ’60 came around, my dad was of
the opinion that Adlai’s time had passed and this truly was a chance to
energize the nation and the party and give the Irish Catholics of America
something to be proud of forever.
My father thought he [Joe Kennedy] was a tough guy. They made a
major investment in Chicago years before with the Merchandise Mart.
195
WHERE WERE You?
Rs
A young Bill Daley (far left) with his father, Chicago mayor Richard Daley, Presi-
dent Kennedy, his mother, and five of his six siblings
My dad knew him well. Up until or even after the stroke, he used to come
out to Chicago. He came out to Chicago once or twice to get the reports
on what was going on with that investment, so my dad stayed in touch
with them. He thought he was an extremely bright businessman and used
to say that Theodore White’s book Making of the President, 1960 could’ve
been a one-word book, and that word was “father.” He believed JFK's
father was the one who made him the president.
My father and John Kennedy were close. The first time met him I was
something like twelve, and all of us were in a room with him. He had a
great ability to engage even the young kids like us. He would ask us ques-
tions, and everyone was nervous as heck! He asked one of my sisters, “Do
you teach in a Catholic school?” and she said, “Yes.” About five seconds
later she said, “No, I teach in a Catholic school.” She was fumbling all over
herself, and my dad was like, “What’s going on here?”
196
Bint DALEY
But he engaged us as young people, and he was always very friendly.
I remember once he called during the summer of the convention, before
the convention in ’60, and my parents were at a summer house we rented
up in Michigan. I picked up the phone, and he said, “Is the mayor there?”
I said, “No, he’s not here,” and he said, “This is Jack Kennedy. Would you
tell him I called?” I said, “Do you want me to go get him?” He said, “No,
just tell him I called.” I jumped on my bike and rode down to where my
mom and dad were and told him. Dad came back and called him, and it
was all in anticipation of the 60 convention.
He came to Chicago quite a bit during that election. He came for
the first debate, which was in Chicago. He helicoptered, which was new,
from Indiana into Meigs Field, which at the time was a small runway
right on the lakefront of Chicago. There must’ve been ten or fifteen
thousand people out there waiting for him to arrive. Shortly before the
helicopter landed, the crowds pushed the fence down, and these people
all came running out toward the helicopter. It was kind of like you saw
with the Beatles a few years later. It was that sort of hysteria. The police
had to put sort of a circle around everyone. Kennedy got in a car and
rode down Lakeshore Drive. It was absolute mania going on. Then on
the Friday before the election, he came for what used to be called a
torchlight parade, which ran from State and Madison downtown out
to the old Chicago Stadium on Madison Avenue. There were a million
people between State and Madison—and that’s probably only two or
three miles long at most.
It was unbelievable to see. He was obviously a very good looking guy.
It was a whole new generation. He represented it more than anyone. He
was a war hero. He had it all going on. This was as good a political opera-
tion in the beginning of the new media world that had ever been seen.
But you started with somebody who, again, was incredibly good looking,
articulate. He had a certain style about him that maybe Cary Grant had;
there weren't many politicians out there who had that sort of style. Most
were short, heavyset sort of politicians or Southern senators who walked
around with Panama hats on, smoking cigars. Kennedy just had a whole
different way that was very representative of that new generation, and it
was amazing to see the hysteria in people.
1o
WHERE WERE You?
The Kennedys went to the best schools in America. It was their
wealth and the style, and the lifestyle that gave them was something no
one had seen publicly, especially in the political world. He had his own
airplane. There were lots of people who honored that and werent so cyni-
cal about it as we would be today. They wanted to have it, but there were
also people in our neighborhood when we grew up who were proud that
somebody had that who was Irish Catholic, knowing that most didn’t get
that chance. It wasn't held against them—it was celebrated; it was great
that one of us was able to do that and get there.
There’s a famous picture we have of Kennedy in an open car coming
down Madison; it’s bedlam. Everyone in the picture has a stressful look
on their face, from the press to his sisters in the car to my dad. ‘There’s
great anxiety. Kennedy’s got the biggest smile on his face, enjoying him-
self. It’s a great picture, and it kind of summarized how much he enjoyed
that. It was a great rally. I remember sitting there, listening to his speech;
we were all out there, our whole family, and it was four days later that he
was elected.
I remember election night. It was a long night: My dad came home
around four or five oclock in the morning, showered, changed clothes,
and then went back downtown. It probably wasn’t until about ten in the
morning, I think, before they actually called it. The untold story is that
when there were allegations about vote fraud—and this is fifty years ago—
my father offered to pay for half of a statewide recount if the Republican
Party would pay for the other half. They refused.
We were the first family on the day after the inauguration that Ken-
nedy had breakfast with. Truman, and then us. You know that picture we
have in our house? We
were the first guests,
My father offered to pay for and he took us for a
/ tour. We all went to the
half of a statewide recount if the inauguration, six of the
Republican Party would pay for X" of us. My brother
Rich was a freshman
the other half. They refused. and at a Catholic col-
lege, and they wouldnt
198
Britt DALEY
let him out because he had a final exam, so the six of us went. It was great
excitement, and my brother John and J—and I was twelve or thirteen—
we had white ties and tails and top hats we had rented. Top hats! It was
crazy. That evening after the Inaugural Ball, we were going back to the
hotel. My dad said, “How'd you like to go to the White House tomorrow?”
and I said, “Great.” He said, “We're all going over early.” So about 8:00 or
8:30 in the morning, we're there. I think the president had had breakfast
with Harry Truman, and then Truman and the president came walking in
from the residence, and we were all sitting in the Cabinet Room. My dad
was close to Harry Truman also over the years, so we all said hello. Then
Truman left, President Kennedy took us into the Oval Office, and we had
pictures taken. He wrote a note to each of us, a handwritten note. When
he came to me, he asked, “What’s your name?” and I said, “Bill.” My dad
said, “William,” so the note is to William.
Then he said, “Come on; I just moved in here yesterday. Let’s go for a
tour.” So Kennedy took us for a tour of the White House, and he showed
us the swimming pool. Then we went into the main building, the resi-
dence. We went upstairs, and they were having public tours on the main
floor. The staff and the security people started to put curtains up, like
bamboo curtains, to separate, and he said, “No, no, no; don’t put those up.”
So the tours were going on in one part of the aisle, and we were walk-
ing down the other. Then somebody would say, “There’s the Blue Room,
there’s the Red Room,” and Kennedy said, “We can't go upstairs” because
Mrs. Kennedy was upstairs resting; as you know, she had just had a baby
shortly before the inauguration. So Kennedy took us for a tour, and then
we went back to the Oval Office to say good-bye to him. My brother Rich
came down to Washington with my dad six months later. Kennedy said to
him, “You werent here for the inauguration,” and Rich said, “No.” Ken-
nedy said, “Come on, I'll give you the tour I gave them.” So he took Rich
for a tour of the place. It was great. We have a terrific picture of the six of
us, my mom and dad, and the president on January 21 in the Oval Office.
When I left the White House under President Obama, he gave me a
picture of my dad in the Oval Office with Kennedy and a picture of him
and me in the Oval Office with a handwritten note to me, which was very
kind.
mo
WHERE WERE You?
e ŘŘŮŮŮ
My father thought Kennedy was doing great all the time. He was
extremely proud, and he was supporting him from morning till night on
whatever he wanted to do. He believed Kennedy was getting the country
moving. He was focusing on urban America; he was going to try to get
things done. He obviously had a very difficult Congress at the time, with
Southern Democrats and Republicans, different than today.
I’m sure they talked about civil rights. I’m not sure which of the tapes
relate to that, but the civil rights [movement], the whole change that
was going on in America and in urban cities and the migration into the
big cities, like Chicago, and the difficulties that were going on, was one
of the reasons my dad wanted Kennedy to win. But it was a tumultuous
time, even those three brief years, for America: on race and obviously on
Vietnam.
We all went out to the airport when the president came to dedicate
O’Hare. We did the whole thing with him, and then he did a couple of
major Cook County Democratic Party fundraisers. He spoke at at least
one or two of those. One time he was riding out to McCormick Place,
and a new development had been built, a mixed-race development on the
South Side, not far from McCormick Place, called Prairie Shores. My
dad was in the car—this is the old days—and they diverted the motorcade
because he wanted to show Kennedy the development. ‘They were good
friends and had a lot of exchanges. In early November 63 Kennedy was
supposed to come out to the Air Force~Army game at Soldier Field in
Chicago. It was the weekend that the assassination of the president of
Vietnam took place, so he called that morning to say he couldn't come out
for the game, which was rather disappointing—about three weeks later
he was assassinated.
The last time we saw him was at the Mayors Conference in June ’63
in Hawaii. My mom and dad, my brother John, and I went out to that.
My dad may have been president of the Mayors Conference that year.
They had a big hall for him to come in and speak, and my brother John
and I were standing on the aisle. Kennedy came down the aisle, and there
was a lot less security back then, but there was still a lot of security. But as
Kennedy was coming down the aisle, shaking hands with people, we were
200
Bitt DALEY
trying to get to him like everybody
else. He shook hands with us; he
looked and went about two feet and
then turned around and said, “What
are you guys doing here? Where’s
your father?” We said, “He’s up on
the stage.” All these people are look-
ing at us like, What the heck did he
stop and talk to them for?
Kennedy went up and gave his
speech. My father had a tendency, as
an Irishman, I guess, to get really red
if he was out in the sun. He looked
like a lobster. So on the way back out of the place, Kennedy came over
and said, “Jeez, your dad’s really sunburned. Take care of him. Have a good
time in Hawaii,” or something like that. But John and I were looking, and
the people around us were like, Who the heck are these two guys?
a —i
I was a sophomore in high school, and they announced on the PA system
that he had been shot. We were in English class, and then they announced
that he had passed away. We went to Latin class, and then they ended the
day for everyone. We all left early in the afternoon. I got on the bus, and
no one was talking. Women were crying as we went home. My brother
and I were taking the bus home, and there was just a hush. When people
did talk, they talked in hushed tones; there were women crying, and you
could just see the stunned look on everyone's faces.
We lived in a very ethnic, Catholic neighborhood. Obviously all the
churches opened up that evening, had some sort of prayer service. There
was just an enormous pall over the city that I don't think I’ve ever expe-
rienced. It was probably somewhat similar to 9/11. ‘That night, Friday
night, my dad came home for dinner, and that was only the second time
in my life I ever saw him cry: when his father died and that night. I think
my father was of the sense that things were possibly spinning out of con-
trol. How could this happen? With all the other social changes going on,
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WHERE WERE You?
there was great fear that there was something—an undercurrent—here
that was going to be very bad for the country.
We saw ourselves vulnerable as a nation to things that were foreign to
us. At the time of the Cold War, the racial changes, the social changes in
the country, Kennedy was making changes and represented a new way of
doing things. But with his assassination, there began to be a real concern:
Were these new ways going to spin out of control? Were we going to
change things fundamentally and lose control in a disorganized way and
not with a game plan?
Then you went into the mid-’60s, the war and the disturbances
throughout many cities in America and the rest of the world, and then
you stumbled into ’68 and all hell broke loose—a president chased out
of office, Bobby Kennedy assassinated, Martin Luther King, the Dem-
ocratic Convention, the Russians invade Czechoslovakia—and nobody
does anything, you know? You have the riots in Paris and the youth riots,
and the whole world seemed to be spinning out of control that year.
My father was—in the sense that this person he had put so much
hope in, and again this Irish Catholic thing—really strong. For someone
with my father’s background, who fought to come up into politics and
government and leadership and to have the chance to work with an Irish
Catholic president—someone he was close to, had known for quite a few
years, and had known the father for many years because they had substan-
tial investments in Chicago—it really affected him. You could just feel it.
You could see it. He acted that way for a while, for quite a while, and that
transferred in many ways to Bobby and then to Ted Kennedy even many
years later. He stayed very close to them and with many of the people who
were close to the Kennedys.
202
Swanee Hunt
A daughter of Texas oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, Swanee Hunt was thirteen
years old in 1963. Her father was a right-wing firebrand on the radio,
and after the assassination, some believed that ultraconservatives in
Dallas, including H. L. Hunt, may have played a role in JFK’s death.
More recently, Swanee Hunt founded the Women and Public Policy Pro-
gram at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and Presi-
dent Clinton appointed her as his ambassador to Austria. She is also
the Eleanor Roosevelt lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School.
ad was sixty-one when I was born, so he was in his late seventies as
I was developing my own voice. It was actually my mother who—
when she found out that Mark, the boy I wanted to marry, had voted
for Hubert Humphrey—opposed our marriage adamantly, even though
he was training to be a Southern Baptist minister. She opposed it and
opposed it, but then when it became inevitable, she decided, “m going
to get onboard. How do I tell your father?” She went into the library and
told him. Mark and I were waiting, and then we went in, and he was very
pleased. He said, “I think you ought to start having babies right away.”
He was thinking more about legacy than he was about what my points
of view were.
My first memory of John Kennedy was when my dad was in the paper
and the headline was “Hunt Backs Jack.” It was so extraordinary because
my father wasn’t just an ardent anti-Communist; he was really a voice for
the rightest of the right. But he felt very disillusioned when Jack Ken-
nedy came to be president; he figured that the Communists at Harvard
had ruined him. Dad was a huge admirer of Joe Kennedy, so he was quite
disappointed in Joe’s son Jack—but he just couldn't stand Nixon.
2.03
WHERE WERE You?
Dad wasnt vitriolic, but
he was very convinced that the
Communists had infiltrated our
country. It’s so interesting when
we think about those times. The
Soviets had instilled a reign of
terror in Eastern Europe. Let's
not forget that when Khrushchev
was banging his shoes saying,
“We will bury you,” that was real.
But dad had Lifeline, a series of
radio stations with his program
that he sponsored, and they were
advocating things like getting out
of the United Nations because it FMR — k
was Communist controlled— Swanee Hunt with her father, H. L.
actually all the universities were
Communist controlled. I went to SMU, ten minutes from the house, even
though it was “Communist controlled.” I really wanted to go to Radcliffe,
but because it was run by Communists, I couldn't. And you know what?
Fifteen years ago, when I went to Harvard to teach, Radcliffe asked me
to come and speak there. I told them that story, that I really wanted to
come to Radcliffe and my father wouldn't let me because it was run by
Communists. Someone in the back of the room yelled out, “We were,” so
maybe there was more to it.
I didn't share his views, but we didn't argue with him—it was sort of a
very old-style patriarchy. I'd say our family tree looked like a weeping wil-
low. Of all of Dad’s kids, and there were fourteen living, I believe I was the
youngest to pull out of that point of view. I was a child of the ’60s. I was
born in 1950, so as I was shaping my own view of myself and also of society,
Gloria Steinem was out there leading the women’s movement; there was
the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement. I was really
influenced by those in a way that my older brothers and sisters werent.
Regarding the climate in the city, I went to an all-girls school that
had an unusual number of what we would call liberal students because
204
SWANEE HUNT
they were from the Jewish community. And yet I remember being on the
playground playing tetherball, and we were chanting, “We'll have a World
War III. We elected Kennedy.” If you want to understand the culture,
one of the good places to do that is on a playground, because the kids are
soaking it up from their families at home.
I found out from John Kenneth Galbraith, who’s now deceased but
was a friend, that Dad called Galbraith and said, “Why don't we have a
radio program, and you and I will represent different points of view.” I
think that’s fascinating. My father had no formal education. He left home
when he was about eleven, jumped on a railroad car, and laid railroad
tracks. He planted eucalyptus, was a short-order cook, a lumberjack. He
was born in 1889, so he was of the era of what we call self-made men, that
American phenomenon. It actually did exist.
Everything about our upbringing was uncomfortable except for the
First Baptist Church. I’m not now an evangelical fundamentalist, but at
First Baptist Church you had the strong evangelical Christians, funda-
mentalists who were really reacting against the social gospel, which was
saying we need to care about civil rights and things like that. They said,
“No, it’s your relationship to the Lord, to Jesus.” Well, that was at a cross-
roads with political conservatism, the far right, and out of that came the
religious right. It happened at First Baptist Church. I was there. First
Baptist Church had two pastors in ninety-six years. My father was repre-
senting the political piece, and my mother, God bless her, was represent-
ing the religious piece, and it was happening at the church. We were at the
church eighteen hours a week.
I was drawn into politics because it was political conversations every
night. I would ask questions like, “Who is Alger Hiss?” and Dad was
furious when I asked that. He said, “You dont know who Alger Hiss is.
That shows you're being influenced by Communist dupes.” You couldn't
really ask a question even about a person I thought would show that I was
engaged. But no, we didn't have that ominous feeling about Kennedy in
my in my circle.
The week that Kennedy was coming to Dallas, there was a great sense
of expectation—it was exciting that he was coming, and I wasn't afraid in
any way. Everyone in the country knows where they were, what the room
205
WHERE WERE You?
looked like, what the sounds in the air were when they got the news of
the death. I was iù a science class, and it came on over the loudspeaker at
the school. I was thirteen. The teacher’s face became ashen. I remember
getting a beaker from the lab and getting some water to take to her, and
then all of a sudden the principal knocked on the door and asked me to
come out of the room. My sister Helen, who's a year older, was already in
the hallway, and we were whisked off in a police car, an unmarked police
car as I recall, and taken to the home not of friends in our inner circle
at the church but of the next town. We were told never to tell anyone
where we were. We didn’t see our parents for weeks. My sister, who was
in the university, was taken in by a professor. My brother stayed close to
the frat house because of death threats against my family. That wasn't the
first time we had had death threats. I remember being on an airplane.
The plane landed, and everyone was asked to keep their seats, and then
my family was taken off by security people, sort of guarded so that we
wouldn't be shot by a sniper. That was part of our life.
My father disappeared, and my mother disappeared. We found out
later that they had put on some sunglasses and essentially gotten the
hell out of Dodge. They went
incognito out of Dallas and
We were whisked off in a were gone for quite a while,
but we didn’t have contact with
them. We didnt know what
police car as I recall, and was going on. I never had a
taken to the home not of one-on-one conversation with
him about what happened—
fr tends in our inner circle we never had conversations.
at the church but of the I don’t remember Dad ever
asking, “How was your day?”
police car, an unmarked
next town. We were told We saw each other every day;
never to tell anyone where at six oclock we were to be at
the table because Lifeline was
going to start, and the radio
parents for weeks. was on the table. After we
heard the fifteen-minute show,
we were. We didnt see our
206
SWANEE Hunt
he changed the dial and
heard another fifteen-min-
ute show. That was our thirty
minutes at the table. But he
adored Helen and me and
my brother and other sister,
and he had us sing for com-
pany every night. We always
had company, five nights out
of seven, and Helen and I
would sing anti-Communist
ditties: “Put on your think-
ing cap, and see the big
booby trap and the mistaken
bait for you and me, and if we dont awaken we will all be taken, and we'll
never more be free,” instead of “Put on Your Old Grey Bonnet.” It was
pretty far out there.
‘Those radio programs were very popular in the rural South. We have
our comparables now, but it wasnt mean; it wasnt a Rush Limbaugh
name-calling. He didn't want to say “Communist” on the air, so it was “the
mistaken enemies of freedom.” I think that “mistaken” is a very respectful
word to use as I look back on it. It’s just that they were behind.every door
and under every rug.
My father’s name continued to pop up, however, when there were
conspiracy theories. It was pretty hard. Not long ago, in 2006, I was in
doing some work at an inner-city school in Boston, where I live, and saw
a chart the kids had made about the Kennedy assassination. How amaz-
ing is that? They showed the different theories, and there was H. L. Hunt.
Like, whoa! Even now, there’s that thought. But those ideas really didn’t
go anywhere; people have studied them, looked so carefully. I don’t let it
haunt me.
At the end of his life, Dad was still very concerned about the country,
but he had passed that on. I was one of what he called “the youth freedom
speakers,” so there was a sense of his passing on the baton to people like
me. He thought I would still be making speeches about the Communists
207
WHERE WERE You?
and Cuba and how they're so close to our shores and that sort of thing.
But you know what Dad was able to accomplish? He passed his zeal on
to me, my two sisters, my brother, and others. He had a vision that he
was going to save the country from the Communists. Can you imagine
that kind of vision? I have a vision too. Im working on how to double
the number of women in Congress. I’m working on how to stop sex traf-
ficking around the world. Pm working on how to stop war by elevating
women's voices. That comes from Dad. It comes from Mom and her reli-
gious commitment.
When I was living in Heidelberg, in my twenties, I went to a movie
with friends. It was on an Army base actually. We watched whatever
movie was coming through. It was called Executive Action. We were half
an hour into it, and I realized it was about the assassination of Kennedy,
and they’re talking about my father as having bankrolled this and that.
I think they even called him “Harold”; my dad’s name was Haroldson.
Those kinds of moments probably happened five or six times, and they
were gut-wrenching. But I’ve talked to people who've looked so carefully
at this, and I am convinced that it is part of that whole conspiracy attrac-
tion, the seduction.
I heard about the Oswald letter to my father on the radio. Now one
told me that it was coming. It made big news where I was living in Hei-
delberg. Actually it was written to “Mr. Hunt.” People who've looked at
it very carefully over several years have discovered that it was actually
intended for E. Howard Hunt, who was involved in the whole Watergate
mess. It was also a forgery by the KGB. It was never even really for Mr.
Hunt [or my father].
208
Jimmy Carter
In 1963 Jimmy Carter was a forty-year-old Georgia state senator and
farmer. Having inherited his father’s debt-ridden farm, he had to live
in public housing while he studied agriculture at public libraries.
He became governor of Georgia in 1971 and president of the United
States in 1977. His post-presidency years, widely considered a model
of humanitarianism and public service, have garnered him countless
awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
eae was popular in Georgia. In fact, when I was first campaign-
ing in Massachusetts, I was asked, “Why do you think you're going
get the votes in Massachusetts?” I pointed out that John Kennedy got a
bigger margin of victory in Georgia than he did in Massachusetts when
he ran for president, so he'd been pretty popular in Georgia except for
some people who considered the race issue most important. Of course
John Kennedy played a strong role in bringing about equality between the
races, and that was not popular with a small fringe of people in Georgia.
But I think he was popular.
In our family he was perhaps the most popular president in my life-
time—more than FDR. My father supported FDR in 1932, but he never
voted for him again because he was basically opposed to government
intrusion in private affairs; plus he was a farmer. When Roosevelt put a
program into effect that required people to plough up cotton and pea-
nuts, kill pigs, and initiate daylight saving time, my father felt that was an
unwarranted intrusion. My daddy was a Libertarian more than a Demo-
crat in those days, but my mother, I think, privately voted for Franklin
Roosevelt because of Eleanor Roosevelt. I dont know for sure about that,
but J think there was no doubt that before the 1964 Goldwater/Johnson
209
WHERE WERE YOu?
election, Georgia was over-
whelmingly favorable toward
Democrats, including John
Kennedy.
I had been quite inter-
ested in politics, even when
I was in the Navy, and when
I resigned from the Navy to
come home to work on the
farm—lI was a farmer for six-
teen or seventeen years, grow-
ing mostly peanuts, cotton,
and corn—John Kennedy was
very important to me. My
mother was a very strong sup-
porter of the Kennedys. She supported Robert Kennedy also, when he ran
for president.
I was working in my warehouse on the day John Kennedy was shot.
I was on a tractor, as a matter of fact, hauling grain and peanuts back and
forth. I unhooked my tractor from a trailer to weigh it and went into my
warehouse where farmers were. Some of them were listening to the radio
and told me that the president had just been shot. I was startled and
grieved. In a few minutes the news came across—I think Walter Cronkite
said it—that the president was no longer living. I went outside on the
private porch and cried for a while. It was the first time I had really wept
for more than ten years. The last time I had wept before that was when
my father died. John Kennedy’s loss was a great personal blow to me, and
I grieved along with the overwhelming portion of people in my own com-
munity and throughout the South. Later I had a chance, as president, to
speak at the dedication of his library.
I grew up in a segregated society. I lived in Orchard, Georgia, which is
west of Plains, just a small community. We were surrounded by about 215
African Americans, so all my playmates, all the people with whom I grew
up, were African Americans, and they made a heavy and beneficial impact
on my life. I saw at an early stage, particularly because of my mother being
210
Jimmy CARTER
a registered nurse and dealing with these families, the devastating impact
of racial segregation, which at that time was supported by the Supreme
Court, Congress, the American Bar Association, the churches, and every-
body else, including the whole congressional delegation in Georgia and
of other states as well. I saw the devastating, adverse impact of that very
misguided thing that had lasted almost a hundred years after the Civil
War, and I saw that John Kennedy and Robert were two of the people
who were condemning it, maybe sometimes tentatively but effectively.
When he died, I didn’t know how John Kennedy’s replacement, Lyn-
don Johnson, would act, but he turned out to be a real hero. It was Johnson
who actually put into effect the civil rights acts that have transformed our
country, following in the footsteps of the Kennedys. I don't believe that
John Kennedy, even in a second term, would've been able to get the civil
rights acts passed that Lyndon Johnson did, because it was a narrow mar-
gin when Johnson finally got Congress to agree. But his inimitable way to
marshal the decisions of Congress to accommodate his desires was really
what made it possible for us to get the civil rights acts passed. Maybe to
some degree, it benefited from the aftermath of the assassination of John
Kennedy. [ think the sorrow and appreciation that went into the political
environment because of John Kennedy’s death did help Lyndon Johnson
put into effect the civil rights acts.
I had never thought about running for public office for-those fif-
teen or sixteen years while I was farming, but I was always affected
beneficially by the idealism and innovations John Kennedy brought to
the presidency. He was the first president born in this century. He was
young and vigorous, dynamic and eloquent. He was a Navy veteran, as
I was, and as Lyndon Johnson and Gerald Ford were; we were all Navy
veterans. He brought a good image and also good accomplishments to
the White House. Those were the key
elements that affected me: the Kenne-
dys’ idealism and eloquence, Lyndon J went outside on the
Johnson’s persuasiveness on Congress, private porch HA
and the need I felt to see racial segre-
gation end in the South and through- cried fe ora while.
out the nation. =e
22 SUM
WHERE WERE You?
That said, the tinge of
the Vietnam War and the
attempted assassinations,
the anti-Cuban factor, and
the Bay of Pigs disaster
provide some remnants
of negative memory of
John Kennedy. But I think
they've faded into rela-
tive secondary importance
[when measured against]
the idealism, vivacity, and
progressiveness he brought,
at least in my mind and, I think, in the general public’s. There’s a general
feeling of good and gratitude toward John Kennedy.
Both Kennedys and Johnsons administrations provided me not
only with ideas but also with personnel. My secretary of defense, Harold
Brown, has just written a book that covers a good deal about what he
learned in direct meetings with John Kennedy on the nuclear issue, the
Cold War with Russia, and the development of our nuclear arsenal. A lot
of those top personnel who worked with Kennedy did work for me in the
White House. I walked in his footsteps like I walked in the footsteps of
all previous presidents in a way. But what John Kennedy brought to the
White House has really not been duplicated, replicated, or even felt an
element of competition. There’s still that vivacity and that change from
one generation to another, which really has not existed since that time.
The most direct effect of John Kennedy’s administration was the
Peace Corps. My mother, who worshipped John and Bobby Kennedy,
went into the Peace Corps largely because of her affection for them. She
was still in the Peace Corps when she was seventy years old, serving in
India. Later, my oldest grandson, Jason Carter, my mother’s great-great
grandson, fulfilled that position as a Peace Corps volunteer. He served
in the Peace Corps in South Africa. So both my mother and my oldest
grandson have served in the Peace Corps, partially honoring the legacy
of John Kennedy.
212
Jimmy CARTER
One thing we should
remember is to address the Poth Kennedys and Johnsons
key issues of our nation pae i ;
truthfully and forthrightly, Administrations provided me
which I believe he did. In not only with ideas but also
my opinion, there is a leg-
acy of John Kennedy that
emphasizes human rights
with personnel.
and peace. Our country has
gone backward tremendously in the aftermath of 9/11 in honoring the
basic premises of human rights. There are thirty paragraphs in the Uni-
versal Declaration of Human Rights, and the United States is now violat-
ing ten of those premises. That would be inimical to what John Kennedy
stood for.
Since the Second World War, the United States has been involved
in conflict after conflict. John Kennedy was very heavily affected—as was
I—by the need to avoid war because of a threat of a nuclear conflagration
that would have destroyed the earth if we had gone to war with the Soviet
Union. During the Cold War years, there was a great reticence to [get
involved in] regional conflicts that could’ve led to a war between the two
super powers. [hat was particularly on my mind when I saw the fighting
between Israel and Egypt bring about a nuclear alert system when Nixon
was in office. I tried to avoid that process by bringing peace between Israel
and Egypt, and I think John Kennedy had that same feeling of forebod-
ing that a regional war could erupt into a super power conflagration that
would’ve brought a nuclear holocaust.
2E3
Bill Clinton
In 1963 seventeen-year-old Bili Clinton was the Hot Springs High
School delegate to Boys State, where he was elected Arkansas’s del-
egate to Boys Nation. While attending Boys Nation in Washington, DC,
Clinton shook hands with President Kennedy in the Rose Garden. A
photograph of that meeting, just four months before JFK was assassi-
nated, remains one of President Clinton’s proudest possessions. Having
attended Georgetown and then Oxford, he won the Arkansas governor-
ship in 1978 and, after a later term as governor, the US presidency in
1992 for two terms. Since leaving the White House he has devoted
himself to public speaking and humanitarian work through his philan-
thropic foundation. His Clinton Global Initiative has helped improve the
lives of more than four hundred million people around the world.
doubt if he would have run without it [his father’s wealth and drive],
and he probably wouldn't have run if his brother—who by all accounts
was a truly exceptional man—hadnt been killed in World War II. But I |
think that by the time he ran he was quite a gifted politician who was
smart enough, able enough, and knew enough to get himself elected pres-
ident. And in the new era, when primaries prevailed, he turned out to be
quite effective in those primaries.
1960 was the second presidential election I followed. We got a tele-
vision shortly before the 1956 election. I was really involved. I lived in a
Republican county, and when the election was going on, my ninth grade
English teacher let us debate the election every day. I was virtually the only
one taking Kennedy’s side. I was debating with my best friend, who came
from a Republican family, who said, “Nixon has more experience, and he
isnt bad on civil rights,” which was true at the time. I said the country was
214
BILL CLINTON
sluggish; we needed
new leadership. It was
very interesting to me,
how it all played out. It
was my first real obses-
sive following of poli-
tics day to day.
For me what was
interesting was that
Kennedy came from a
wealthy family, whose
father was obviously
much more conserva-
tive than he was. He
was pro-civil rights, ra) Cee: ee
and he wanted an Photograph © Bettmann / CORBIS
economy that worked
for everybody. He seemed genuinely concerned about other people, and
he was young and vigorous. You just had the feeling that if he got the job
he'd do something with it, and I think he did.
The people he appointed clearly had deep convictions about civil
rights. If you look at Burke Marshall, John Doar, and all those.people in
the Justice Department, they weren't playing games. They were serious.
It may have been a political masterstroke when he called Coretta King
when Martin Luther King was jailed. It certainly meant a lot to me and
other Southerners who were pro-civil rights.
But it’s important not to judge him now by the standards and the real-
ity that prevailed then. He made a beginning, and some important things
happened while he was president and before he was assassinated. Presi-
dent Johnson of course did much more and maybe felt it more because of
his own upbringing. But it was made possible because Kennedy won that
election and started the ball rolling.
He showed a concern for people who were dispossessed around the
world. That’s what the Alliance for Progress was about. It’s what the Peace
Corps was about—though I think his feelings were maybe not as rooted
25
WHERE WERE You?
in his own experience as President Johnson's were. He was putting his toe
in. He knew how much Harry Truman had angered the South while inte-
grating the military and any number of other things, and we had Strom
Thurmond’s Dixiecrat Party in 1948. He could see, like anybody who had
eyes then, that there would be a price to pay. Remember, just a few years
later, when President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act, he said he
had created a generation in which the Democrats wouldn't win the South.
It turned out to be painfully true.
< ei
When I go back to Georgetown, if I’m taking people there who are not
familiar with it, I take them by the house and show them the stoop where
he announced Bobby [as his attorney general] and said he thought Bobby
ought to have a little experience before he went into private legal practice.
It was a great line. But Bobby Kennedy had been counsel to the McClel-
lan Committee, and he turned out to be one of finest attorneys general
this country ever had.
I think he wanted Bobby because he knew Bobby would always have
his back. I think you should want an attorney general who'll tell you the
truth about the law and not let you do something illegal but also under-
stands that the presidency as an institution needs to be protected.
They [the press] liked him. I think they identified with him. It was
something new, and as it turned out, it wasn't only something new—there
was substance there. At that time we were close enough to World War II,
close enough to Korea—we were in the bulge of the Cold War—that
the press knew the stakes were high, and they were a little more reluc-
tant to troll the White House and play the “get-the-president” game. I
think that happened more after Watergate happened and they became
disillusioned.
We knew he was going to address us and all the Boys Nation people. There
were a hundred of us, standing in the Rose Garden. We were lined up in
alphabetical order, so I was near the front. I was bigger than everybody
standing around me, and when it was obvious that he was going to come
216
Bit_ CLINTON
down and shake hands—I
didnt know whether hed
shake hands with every- i i
body—I got up there and {shook hands with him.
made sure I shook hands
with him.
It made me feel good about my country, not just him: the idea that
I got up there and made sure
somebody like me, who came from a family without any money or politi-
cal connections, could actually be in the Rose Garden shaking hands with
the president. It’s sort of like: That’s the way a democracy ought to work.
People ought to be able to have access to their leaders, and we ought to
have leaders who aren't afraid of us. I was always so afraid after Kennedy
got shot—and we did a much better job with security later on—that we
would just keep pushing our leaders away from the people. He mingled
with us that day and thanked us because we voted for a civil rights plank
that the Senate wouldn't adopt. He knew there were four Southerners,
including me, who voted for it, and he was very glad about that. It was
really touching, the whole thing, and it made a real impression on me.
One of the things I did after I became president was that every year
I could be in Washington when Boys Nation was there, I had them come
[to the White House], Girls Nation as well, and I always took pictures
with all of them. I was glad I got to shake hands with Kennedy; probably
only twenty or thirty of the one hundred did, and so I always made sure
we did that. The first time we did it, Al Gore told them, “You might want
to make sure you get this picture. It might come in handy someday.” It
was really funny, but it was a moment in the life of a kid that I'll never
forget. I was grateful to him and was grateful to my country.
I wanted to go into politics by then. I figured the best I could ever do
was to be a senator, and I wanted to be a good one if I ever had a chance to
run. Everybody wants to say they knew they were going run for president.
I didn't. But I loved politics, and I believed in civil rights and in Kennedy’s
economic policy, which was moving people out of poverty. I thought the
purpose of politics was to change other people's lives, and that’s what
he was trying to do. So that’s what I was full of that day. I actually got
to meet this guy I had supported, who was young and vigorous and was
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WHERE WERE You?
actually getting things done. I was just so proud to be an American that
day. It made me believe in my country, believe in democracy. I was a true
believer in everything that was best about America—and the fact that
the president would come down there and shake hands with us made me
think I was lucky to be an American.
~ oaa
I was in my calculus class, my fourth-period advanced math class. I was
a senior in high school. It was right after lunch that I heard. My teacher,
Doyle Coe, was the assistant principal, and he was called to the phone.
He came in totally ashen-faced and told us the president had been shot.
I remember it as if it were yesterday. I was heartbroken. I was hoping he
would live. We didn’t know in the beginning whether he was dead. I just
remember being totally bereft. There was a lot of hatred of Kennedy in the
South over civil rights. The people who hated him, the right-wingers in
the South, didn’t think he was being a pansy on civil rights.
I remember walking back to our main school building, and all these
students were there. This girl who was in the band with me—I liked her,
liked her whole family—said, “Maybe it will work out well for the coun-
try.” I knew they were much more conservative than I was, but I was just
appalled. I couldn't imagine why anybody would kill him. I didnt know
anything then about what later came out with all the conspiracy theories
about Cuba and the Mafia and all the stuff I read.
I just thought it was a tragedy for the country, because we seemed to
be moving in the right direction. We were taking on issues that we hadn't
taken on in a long time. I thought we were in good shape at home and
around the world. For all the “best and the brightest” criticism he got, I
thought he was pretty shrewd in making judgments about when not to
take other people’s advice. I thought the way he maneuvered through the
Cuban Missile Crisis indicated that. I’m not sure he would have been as
vulnerable to the people who said we just had to keep building up, and
building up, and building up, and throwing good people after good people
and good money after bad in Vietnam. I’m just not sure he would have.
We’ll never know, but I just was bereft. I felt that he was at the helm
doing well, and I liked Lyndon Johnson.
BILL CLINTON
I’m not like a lot of other
people. I really was for him
when he ran in the primaries.
I just thought hed really done
a good job; he meant some-
thing to the country, and he
symbolized the future. It was
as if it was snuffed out.
They [Jack and Bobby]
seemed young and beauti-
ful and full of life and vigor,
and they were killed on the
job. I think that had a lot to
do with it. I was older when
Bobby Kennedy was killed,
and I also got to meet him once. He came to Georgetown and gave a
speech at a deal I was sponsoring. I really was crushed; I thought he had
the capacity to change the country.
Jackie had this curious combination of youth, beauty, and style. She
really had a very pronounced diction, but she seemed like somebody you'd
like to be with. Later in her life, after I became president and even when
I was running, Hillary and I became friends with her. For reasons I never
fully understood, she supported me in the primary in 1992, and she came
to one of my early events in New York. One of my prized pictures is sit-
ting with her at dinner in the summertime in Martha’s Vineyard. I just
loved her, and Hillary really was close to her.
In a way they symbolized our growing up, our aspirations. For my
whole generation, the first time we looked at politics, there they were, and
we liked what we saw. In her case, because I really got to know her, the
more I knew her, the more I liked her.
~ a
I did [think about the parallels]. I think historically the time I served
was more like the time that Theodore Roosevelt served, but psychologi-
cally it was the same thing [as the Kennedy era], with the generational
219
WHERE WERE You?
change. You were assuming all these responsibilities, and you knew people
would have questions about how you handled the security issues—probably
more for me than for him, although he faced them too.
I always tried to find people who had different experiences than I
did, who had different skills and different knowledge. I thought about
that a lot. There’s a huge danger in Washington, both within the White
House and within the larger community, of groupthink. You’ve got to
fight it all the time. The very first week I was in office, I told all the young
people who were working for me that they should never come into the
Oval Office and tell me what they thought I wanted to hear—otherwise
I could run the place with a computer.
It’s important not to minimize the fact that the Kennedy teams
economic policy worked; that they built important things like the Peace
Corps and the Alliance for Progress; that they and he did a good job
handling the Cuban Missile Crisis. They were smart, and they did a lot
of things well, but they were a little too prone to groupthink. They some-
times didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Pll remember how I felt when I was arguing for his election when I
was fourteen. I’ll remember how I felt when I met him the Rose Garden
when I was almost seventeen. And IIl remember how I felt when he was
killed. I will remember how well I thought President Johnson did when
he took over, and FI remember how badly I wanted Bobby Kennedy to
be elected in 68 and how sick I was when he was killed. It was a rough
decade. Things seemed to be coming apart. In some ways—socially, eco-
nomically, and otherwise—it prefigured the kinds of unraveling we've had
over the last forty years as we moved into a very different world. We now
know of course that there were ambiguities, conflicts, concerns. It’s never
perfect when anybody’s president, but I'll be grateful that he served. I
think he did a lot of good.
220
Joseph Biden
In 1963 Joseph Biden was a twenty-one-year-old political science
major at the University of Delaware. He served on the Delaware County
Council before becoming a US senator in 1972. Reelected to the Sen-
ate six times, he served as chairman of the Foreign Relations Commit-
tee and the Senate Judiciary Committee. Barack Obama selected Biden
as his vice presidential running mate in the 2008 presidential election.
Biden is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to serve as
vice president.
was a senior in high school when John Kennedy was elected. To me it
was all about possibilities. He always talked about everything, but you
had a sense that there was nothing beyond our capacity. From his inaugu-
ral speech to the speech about the moon shot, it was all about possibilities.
That’s what sticks with me most about his legacy. His legacy is that that’s
what we are as a nation. We're a nation that attracts people because of the
possibilities that exist. I was a Catholic schoolboy, Irish Catholic, Jean
Finnegan's son, going to an all-boys Catholic school. I had two reactions.
The first reaction was: My God, this may be the final validation of us Irish
Catholics, that we're totally accepted.
I know this sounds strange, that Irish Catholics in the ’60s would
think somehow they were second class, but that’s how it was. There was
that sense of exclusion from certain areas of social and public life. But
there was the other piece. The other piece was that I couldn’ picture him
at our kitchen table. I mean, John Kennedy was almost princely and very
wealthy. That was different than the Irish Catholic neighborhood I grew
up in. I lived in a neighborhood where I was one of only three Catholic
families—a development, seventy-nine new homes built—and there was a
: WHERE WERE You?
real division about President Ken-
nedy. But there was this great sense
of pride about it. I had a professor
named Dan Carroll in what we
used to call Problems of Democ-
racy, POD. I remember him talk-
ing about how consequential West
Virginia was and what this meant
for the American democracy, that
finally there was this mixed sense
of overwhelming pride. But it
wasnt the kind of connection I
had with Robert Kennedy as a col-
legiate law student. I could picture
Robert Kennedy at my table, but I
could never picture John Kennedy.
My sons, my daughter, and my granddaughter talk about it like this
guy was so overwhelmingly popular. We barely, barely won. There were
allegations, all the usual stuff. But today when they talk about it, my Lord,
everybody loved John Kennedy. But the interesting thing was, after his
assassination there was this sense of the country coming together. That
didn't exist in my memory as a junior in college, that it existed when he
got elected. There was a change in attitude almost immediately.
Concerning Cuba, if you think of his foreign policy, the Democratic
Party at the time was viewed as a robust internationalist party, taking on
Communism—the legacy of Truman—and John Kennedy was viewed as
being very aggressive and tough on foreign policy. I think the Democratic
foreign policy today, after we got over the Vietnam War, is much more
internationalist, less what we were when I first got to the US Senate in
72. There actually are more similarities today, and my guess is that he'd
have a different attitude about Cuba. But Cuba was then part of a bipo-
lar world, and the question was: Was it essentially a pawn of the Soviet
Union? Was it a staging place, et cetera?
What resonates is that he was calm, collected, absolutely resolute.
Having gone through war personally, I think he had more confidence in
222
JosEPH BIDEN
both assessing and challenging
military judgments. So I think It was almost like a frozen
there was a sense of calm and or oe
resoluteness. I remember the fr ame in time.
Cuban Missile Crisis, sitting
in what we called the student
lounge and scrounge, the television on with fifty other people watching
black and white, and John Kennedy coming on and explaining what the
situation was. I remember the sense of real concern but also confidence.
He communicated: “I’m in charge. Pve got this handled. Pm OK. We're
OK. But here’s what it is.” He was like the doctor who came in and said,
“You have cancer, but I think we can take care of this. Pve done this
before. I know”—even though he had never done it before; it was just
confidence. He exuded confidence, and it was contagious.
< —
It was a Friday afternoon; I remember it vividly. I was on the steps of Hul-
lihen Hall on the mall at the University of Delaware. It was a warm day;
we had just come out of class. As we were walking through the hallways,
we heard that the president had been shot. I had a car on campus—I
wasn't supposed to, but I had a car on campus—and three of us we went to
my car, got in the car, and turned on the radio. It was disbelief. I remember
it was almost like a frozen frame in time. Instead of everybody on campus
running and saying, “Did you hear?”—there were these quiet groups of
people saying, “Can that be true?” Youd see five students in a corner. It
was almost like if you said it out loud, he was going to die. Half an hour
later, or almost an hour later, whatever it was, it was, “He’s dead,” and
“How can that be? How is that possible in the United States of America?”
If it happened today, you'd have great crowds gathering in the street, but
then it was private. Whomever you were with, you just pulled aside and
said, “Is this real? Is this really happening?”
I do think Bobby reflected the change that took over the country. With
him, there was always a greater sense of urgency and the need to deal
223
WHERE WERE You?
with it, whether it
was the civil rights .
movement or the
war in Vietnam. I
always had the sense
that Bobby Kennedy
was saying, “This is
who I am. This is
what I believe. This
is worth fighting
for. Here I stand.”
There was more of
a declarative sense
of what this nation
should be. Every-
thing had changed—not just because John Kennedy was assassinated but
because the world was changing rapidly.
When I think of John Kennedy, I still find myself wanting to focus
on his heroic sense of this country, his heroic sense of what his obligations
were, about being able to absorb pain and suffering and move on—the
resilience. My dad used to say, “It’s not about whether you get knocked
down but how quickly you get up,” and John Kennedy was just totally
resilient. The Kennedys, no matter what hit them, they got back up. They
got back up. In that sense, in my mind as a kid, and even as an elected off-
cial, they came to represent the resilience of this country. When I think of
Kennedy, I think about the notion of possibilities. There’s nothing beyond
our capacity. It’s not naiveté; it’s a sense of our capacity.
He'd feel a sense of vindication and surprise that there is an African-
American president. I never doubted his desire to integrate African
Americans fully into society. But, if I can compare him to his brother,
he just thought that it would take a long, long time, that there was a
process. I think he would be surprised at the additional complexity of the
presidency. It’s a very different world. In many ways there’s a lot more
on a president’s plate than there was when he was president. I think he
would be disappointed in an institution I think he cared about, Congress,
224
JosepH BIDEN
the Senate. I think he'd wonder how it had gotten to this point, because
when he was there, there were still real divisions in the country, like what
I got the tail end of in 1972. There was the old segregation, the South, but
it [Congress] still functioned. It still was viewed as the most responsible
legislative body. I think he'd be surprised how it has lost that standing.
225
John Kerry
In November 1963 John Kerry was a nineteen-year-old, guitar-playing
sophomore at Yale University. After graduation he enlisted in the Navy
and requested deployment in Vietnam, where he was awarded three
Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star. Returning to Massa-
chusetts, he became assistant district attorney, lieutenant governor,
and one of the state’s US senators. He ran as the Democratic Party’s
presidential candidate in 2004 and is serving as President Obama’s
second secretary of state.
Kens election was enormous. It was a huge transformative
oment in my life personally as well as in our generation. It was sort
of the breaking out of the 1950s. I remember it as transformative in many
different ways. I was in Boston, going down to the dentist from school
in New Hampshire, and it just by happenstance turned out to be the last
night of the campaign at Boston Garden. I had to go to North Station to _
get a train back up to Concord, New Hampshire, but I played hooky for
a couple of hours and waited for this rally to take place. I took reams of
information back from this incredibly exciting event.
I actually wound up speaking before the school the next day, in a
pre-scheduled debate with a Republican counterpart, doing a two-minute
something before the morning studies. He represented Nixon; 1 repre-
sented Kennedy. It was my first political speech ever, first engagement
ever. Of course he [Kennedy] won—he didn’t win at the school, which
was overwhelmingly Republican—but it was the beginning of a wonder-
ful journey for all of us about the civil rights movement, the nonprolifera-
tion engagement in the world, the Alliance for Progress, the opening up
of doors of opportunity for people in the world, and it excited us. It gave
226
Jonn KERRY
us a great sense of possibility and
a lust for being engaged in the life
around us in politics.
Did I think [the Kennedys]
would define the rest of my politi-
cal life? No, never had a clue. I
graduated from high school in the
summer of ’62 and went to work
for Teddy that summer, full-time
as a volunteer, during the course
of which I met President Kennedy,
and it was transformative. It became
almost natural in the sense that this
was what you want to be doing.
This is the noble enterprise, as
President Kennedy himself put it,
that politics is a worthy undertaking. We all came into it with this tre-
mendous sense of changing the world. It was before the revolution of’68.
It was before Vietnam had a really pronounced impact on all our lives. It
was filled with possibility until that dark November day of 63.
In 1962, while I was working in Boston for Teddy, Id been told we
were going sailing, and I raced to get down to Hyannis in time: I was late.
I arrived at a very different summer White House from anything you
see today. It was one little security thing at the front gate. I said, “Here’s
who I am,” and they said, “Oh, go ahead, drive up.” I drove up and got out
in front. There was one guy in front. I walked into the house, and there
was a guy silhouetted in the window, standing there alone, nobody else
around. He turned around, and was the president of the United States.
He walked over to me and said, “Hi.” I said, “Hi,” and, probably inap-
propriately, I think I said, “Mr. Kennedy.” I didn’t even know you call him
“Mr. President” back then.
We talked for a minute. He asked, “What are you doing?”
I said, “Tm in between high school. I’m going off to college.”
He said, “Where you going?”
I said, “Yale,” and I grimaced, knowing he was a Harvard guy.
227
WHERE WERE You?
He looked atme, said, “No, no, that’s great, you know, because I now
have a Yale degree.” He’d just gotten his honorary degree. He couldn't have
been nicer about it and talked to me about the campaign and what ‘Teddy
was doing. Then we all raced out to go sailing, and it was totally surreal.
What was it like? It was: Pinch yourself. “Am I really here? What’s going
on?” He disarmed me completely and made it meaningless that I was going
to the rival school. He put me at ease and then exhibited all that charm, all
that charisma that everybody saw in so many ways so many times.
Regarding his Cold Warrior persona, Vietnam hadn't risen to a level
of awareness where it was a major choice in our lives until after he had
been assassinated. It was really Lyndon Johnson who bore the brunt of
implementing “Bear any burden, pay any price.” Many of us opposed that
at some later point in time, but with President Kennedy what we saw was
the hope and possibility, and we saw his stand on civil rights. We saw
him send the troops down to break the back of Jim Crow. We saw him
with this exciting Justice Department and Bobby Kennedy, the challenge
against organized crime, and all these efforts to set the world right. That
was still in its most romantic, least impactful in any negative way, stage.
I don’t think we saw that. I didn’t feel any confrontation with that at the
time. Later, obviously, those words came back to be reexamined in many
different ways at many different times, but it certainly wasn’t manifest in
his presidency at that point in time.
<
The day he died is indelible, obviously, for all of us. I was playing in the
Harvard-Yale soccer game, and I heard a ripple. I was playing, and I came
out, sat down on the bench, and heard this ripple of conversation and
concern and audible gasp go through the audience. The word was: “The
president has been shot.” We didnt know what had happened or any-
thing. I remember just being completely disconnected from the game. It
was just a shock. I mean everybody felt like, “What are we doing? We're
playing a soccer game, and the president’s just been shot.”
We played out the game, and we learned before the game had ended
that he had died. It was sort of a lost period of time. I can't tell you to this
day who won. I dont know. I’ve never gone back and found out. It was
JoHN KERRY
such a state of shock for everybody that this could happen in America
to the president. Notwithstanding that historically we’ve lost too many
presidents to assassination. It’s sort of stunning when you go back and
look at it.
‘There was a sense of turning everything upside down, a total sense of
the order of things having come apart somehow. I remember being with
my roommates; we spent the entire weekend glued to the television. Then
of course you watched this next moment of surreality, when Lee Harvey
Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby. We were all trying to find some mean-
ing in it. How do you find meaning in something like that? I remember
walking around New Haven at two or three oclock in the morning with
a cousin who came down to spend some time with me because he knew
I was involved in the politics and involved personally. At that moment I
remember saying, “We have to make sense out of this. We, all of us, have
to find a way to do something that makes it right.” It was a very strong
feeling of a responsibility to lead a life that made a difference somehow.
Regarding possible conspiracies, to this day I have serious doubts
that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I certainly have doubts that he was
motivated to do that by himself. Pm not sure if anybody else was involved.
I don't go down that road, with respect to the grassy knoll theory and all
of that, but I have serious questions about whether they got to the bottom
of Lee Harvey Oswald. I think he was inspired somewhere by something,
but I can't pin anything down on that. I’ve never spent a lot of time on it.
But I think, after a certain period of time, and that period of time may
well have passed, it is totally appropriate for a country like the United
States to open up the files on
whatever history can be shed light
on. I think that is appropriate. It
has to be done in ie right way, How do y ou fi nd
by the right entities or people, but meaning in s$ omething
certainly by a valid historian or for like that?
some valid analysis; I think that
everybody would benefit.
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WHERE WERE You?
I enlisted back in 1965, not long after Lyndon Johnson's call for five hun-
dred thousand trdops in response to the Gulf of Tonkin episode in 1964.
The America of 1965 was just dramatically different from the America of
1968. Even 1966, when I graduated, was a world apart from the universi-
ties and campuses of late 1967 and 1968. I think the first draft card was
burned and the demonstration against the Pentagon were in 1967. I was
in uniform. I volunteered because I thought it was important to volunteer.
I thought that’s what you should do. You should serve your country. You
should spend some time in the military, and many of my classmates did:
my brother-in-law-to-be; some of my best friends; my good friend, Fred
Smith, who was in our class and later founded FedEx—they all volun-
teered. FBI director Bob Mueller, who wasn't at Yale but at Princeton,
volunteered, went into the Marines.
Initially I believed that America needed not to quit on it [Vietnam],
not lose. I saw it in fairly traditional terms. I had doubts as I went. I have
repeatedly said to people that I had serious questions as I went, which was
1968, because we were hearing from a lot of people coming home. ‘There
was a new debate. There were new facts. A lot of people had a better sense
of what was happening there. Then of course I went, I learned for myself,
and came back very much opposed to what we were doing, believing that
it couldn’t work, that it was doomed almost from the beginning, because
I had a better sense of what the reality was.
What would President Kennedy have done about Vietnam had he
lived? I have no way of ultimately resolving it. But, like everybody whos
followed that question, I do believe he was, himself, having serious doubts
about any escalation. Most of the records indicate that after the election
he intended to draw down and not get sucked into a larger war. But in the
end, we can only speculate.
I didn’t think at the time that Vietnam was Kennedy’s mistake. It
was much more the hubris of what went on in the years after that. We
learned that the Golf of Tonkin incident wasn't real, didn’t happen. We
learned that we were interpreting things completely wrongly. We were
just dead wrong about judgments being made about the Domino Theory,
Communism versus civil war. There was just a host of things I learned
later—observations of people like Bernard Fall and others of that time
DEO
JoHN KERRY
who had been completely
ignored and/or distorted in
order to fit this war into a
compact theory that simply
didn't apply.
lot of sus) reli ver,
angry about that as the years
went on. Back in 1963, I
cant remember the numbers
now, but there weren't that
many people there. By 1968
you had the height, around
five hundred thousand, and sixteen thousand died in 1968. Then you had
Richard Nixon, who ran on a secret plan for peace that, three years later,
was still a secret. That’s where the sense of bitterness and anger and frus-
tration really set in. Back in the early 1960s, there was a kind of simplistic,
fairly stereotypical, post-World War II, post-Korea view of the world.
By 1968 it was hard to say there was an excuse for that anymore; and by
72,73, and certainly 75, there was none. Henry Kissinger and Richard
Nixon understood that, which is why they worked so hard ultimately to
get an agreement that drew down and pulled out.
President Kennedy was, I think, not allowed to fulfill his-prospects
of being a great president in substance, in terms of legislation accom-
plished, bills passed, changes implemented on the nation. But in terms of
his impact on the nation and his leadership for those brief years, he was
a great president—he motivated, inspired, and left an indelible mark in
a very short period of time by virtue of personality and presence. That’s a
big deal in today’s world or by any standard. Certainly Lyndon Johnson
passed far more impactful legislation and had a much greater legislative
legacy than John Kennedy was allowed to have. I’ve read many analogies
to the first years of other presidents who followed him, who really came
into their own in their second term or later in their presidency. We never
got to see the full measure of what might have happened legislatively,
but we certainly are still living with the legacy of a president who had a
profound impact on the world.
23k
Chris Matthews
In November 1963 Chris Matthews was a seventeen-year-old college
freshman from Philadelphia. After moving to Washington, DC, and join-
ing the Capitol Police force, he became an aide to four Democratic
members of Congress, worked as a speechwriter for President Carter,
and served as a top aide to Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill. Since
1997 he has hosted Hardball with Chris Matthews on MSNBC. The Chris
Matthews Show aired on NBC from 2002 to 2013. Among other topics,
he has written two books on JFK, Kennedy, and Nixon: The Rivalry that
Shaped Postwar America and Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero.
Pat Moynihan once came up to me and said, “We've never gotten over
it.” He looked me in the eye and said, “You've never gotten over it,” which
was to me almost like an ordination. He was bringing me into the broth-
erhood because he knew Kennedy. I try to explain to people just in a
big-world sense: You don't know what politics in America was like before
Kennedy. It was guys in three-piece suits, the smell of cigars on them,
musty characters like Taft—they were boring people.
For the party chairs we used the word “politician,” which meant
backroom guys. It didn’t mean candidates. It meant backroom guys with
You dont know what politics in America was like
before Kennedy. It was guys in three-piece sutts,
the smell of cigars on them, musty characters like
Taft—they were boring people.
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Curis MATTHEWS
cigars, Adolphe Menjou types.
That’s what politics was. Probably
the most interesting guy would be
Ike. At least he was happy. He had
a nice smile. Everybody else was
sort of an indoor type—and along
came this guy, Kennedy. Although
it wasn't the colorized version we
got after his death, the Camelot
thing, it was pretty amazing to
watch.
‘That was the day when people
had a million people at a rally in
New York, half a million people
in downtown Philadelphia on a
Wednesday at lunchtime. People had torchlight rallies, like in Connecti-
cut at two oclock in the morning, or in Michigan when he announced the
Peace Corps at two o'clock in the morning at Ann Arbor.
It was a participatory democracy in those days. People had voter hats
and buttons, not just lawn signs, and we were all into it. For the American
people to vote like they'd never voted before—everybody voted, thirty-
three million [votes] apiece—and then to have the guy taken away from
us, the guy we picked? ‘Ihe guy who fought for the job and won it nar-
rowly and clean, he wins, and then he’s taken away from us.
I think nobody's gotten over it. It’s not supposed to happen that way.
One minute he’s riding in a car, looking like a million bucks with his
beautiful wife, and everybody’s waving at him, and the next minute he’s
on a gurney.
~=_—_—— -—
Hemingway’s comment about grace under pressure fits [Kennedy during
World War IJ]. It’s in the middle of the night; it’s completely black. There’s
no moon or stars. We're in the South Pacific, and his little balsawood boat
gets cut in half. Eleven feet from him, he sees a Japanese destroyer go
by—eleven feet from him in the boat—and his back is hurting. He said,
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WHERE WERE You?
“This is what it feels like to die.” His back was already bad, and he hits the
deck, and it gets smashed again. In that split second, he decided basically
to roll and dive into the water. They’re in the ocean, the high seas, and he
swims to the other part of the boat, which is drifting away, finds Paddy
McMahon, who’s badly burned, convinces him to try to come back and
save his own life. Then he finds another fellow, who wants to give up too,
and says, “You're putting on a bad demonstration here for our fella from
Boston.” Gets him to save his life, gets his thick sweater off, and carries
him back to the boat. He gets the guys onto the boat. He decides, “This
boat’s already turned over in the middle of the night. It’s not going to
make it to the next day. We've got to swim.”
Four miles away, there’s an island called Plum Pudding. The key is they
have to find an island the Japanese wouldn't be likely to come by, because
the biggest fear of those guys, as we know from the book Unbroken, is to
be captured by the Japanese. You don't want to be captured. It’s worse than
anything else, worse than drowning, so he has to find an island that is far
enough away from them yet reachable. So what does he do? He takes the
four guys who couldn't swim and the five guys who could, and he makes
sure they all stick together on an eight-foot plank they found. He gets his
EO, his executive officer, to take charge. He puts them together, so he saves
everybody—and he’s operating as a commanding ofhcer.
Then he puts Paddy McMahon on his back and carries him for four
hours in the water with a bit of the guy’s life jacket strap in his mouth,
just pulling him the whole way. Paddy has no idea that Kennedy had a
bad back to start with and it has been hurt again. He gets them [onto the
island] and pukes on the sand when he arrives there.
Half an hour later, he recovers and says, “I’m going out tonight.” He
puts a revolver in his pocket. He’s got a lantern. He swims out into the
ocean again, tries to wave down some other boat—he’s scared to stay there
another minute because of the Japanese. He gets washed away to some
other sandbar. He wakes up on his sandbar, swims back to the island, and
then says, “I’m going out again.” He swims to another island. Finally they
get to the third island, and he finds water. He finds a Jeep can with some
water in it from the Japanese and some candy. He heads back, gets the
crew, and keeps them going.
Curis MATTHEWS
It’s thrilling to think about this courage and leadership from this rich
kid. Where'd it come from? He never had a life like this. He never had to
be this kind of person. He certainly wasn't Joe Kennedy’s kid. Joe Ken-
nedy wasnt much of a patriot, [nor] much of an American really. Jack was
the American. It’s an amazing thing. It’s almost like The Godfather in a
good sense. He was the assimilated son who loved this country and was
going to fight and maybe die for it.
Bobby wasn't happy with the LBJ pick. Bobby, I think, wanted to be vice
president, though who knows what he wanted? He couldn't have been
vice president.
I think [John] Kennedy had this feeling about Johnson. He just didn’t
feel comfortable in the room with him. He always felt that maybe this guy
wanted to be president, and Johnson would admit, later in his life, that
he calculated his best chance of becoming president was to become vice
president. What did that tell your
But Kennedy felt this sort of ogre-ish presence around Johnson. He
said, “There’s something about the guy.” He told that to people like Ben
Bradlee—but he always tried to treat Johnson with respect, and Bobby
didn't.
I think Kennedy respected the rogue quality of Johnson as the guy
who may have won an election under questionable counts back in 1948.
I think he liked the way he ran the Senate, but they weren't close, and in
the end it was pure calculation not to pick Scoop Jackson or somebody
he might have gotten along with. There’s the ruthless calculation: that he
knew he had to pick Johnson or he was wasting his time.
Kennedy was the first Catholic [presidential nominee]. He was going
to lose a lot of the South because of that. He was going to lose a lot the
Midwest because of that. He did hope he'd get California. He did hope
he'd get Ohio. He didn’t get either. He needed Texas. He needed states
like Texas and Georgia, and even looking ahead to ’64, he said, “I need
LBJ on the ticket. I have to pick him because I need Texas and probably
Georgia.” Even then, Kennedy thought he needed Johnson.
i oe
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WHERE WERE You?
The Cuban Missile Crisis to me is astounding in terms of how Kennedy
got us through it. There were both Churchill and Chamberlain involved
in terms of this, Churchill in the heroic stand he took and Chamber-
lain in the deal he cut. If Kennedy hadn't found a way to cut the deal
for the Jupiter missiles in Turkey and found a way to allow Khrushchev,
who came off pretty well in that, to be able to pull back and take on his
generals, we wouldn't have gotten through it. He had to find a way to do
something under the table.
June 63 is Kennedy’s greatest month, when he was able in three great
speeches to come out for a nuclear test-ban treaty; the “Ich Bin ein Ber-
liner” speech, the best speech of the Cold War; and the civil rights speech.
Whatever else people say about him, he was the first president in
history to go on national television and say, “It’s the Bible. It’s our Con-
stitution. It’s what we believe as Americans,” and to raise [civil rights] as
a moral issue, which actually LBJ recommended that he do, to make it a
moral issue. Certainly Martin Luther King was out there ahead of him,
but I think he was the first president [to do it].
~—_—~ —ie-
I grew up in a pretty Republican family, and I was [part of the] out-there
libertarianism of Goldwater back in the 60s. By the time Goldwater ran
in 64, I was turned off to him, but I was very much in that libertarian
mode, like a lot of people.
I always wanted to meet Kennedy. It was a weird thing; even when |
disagreed with him politically, I wanted to meet him. I always found him
to be the most interesting politician of our time. Nixon was something; I
liked Nixon. Goldwater was interesting; I liked him—he was romantic as
a hero. But Kennedy was the one I found the most interesting as a person.
I wanted to meet him because I couldnt quite figure him out. He did
things that were so smart and almost brilliant politically; he always hit the
mark, and I was just fascinated with that one. When I was conservative,
he was too liberal, but he was also a liberal with balls, as we used to say
about him, compared to Stevenson.
The other part of it is the longer courage. Imagine you're born and
have every illness there is. You have scarlet fever; you have your appendix
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Curis MATTHEWS
taken out. Then you have something that you can’t quite figure out. It’s a
knot in your stomach—and we've all had nervous knots—but a knot that’s
inside your stomach; it never goes away, you can't figure it out, and you have
to eat light foods and soups. You can’t eat anything heavy or anything fried;
it keeps getting worse and worse, and then you find out you have leukemia,
which means youre going to die young. You're having your blood count
[taken] all the time. Your mother calls but never visits you. The mother,
Rose, was kind of remote.
He’s away at Choate, constantly thinking, Tm going to die. All they can
do is keep my red blood cell count [up] and everything. That’s going on, and
finally it turns out that he has colitis, which is bad enough. To have all these
sicknesses and the bad back, which he had congenitally. ... One of his legs
was three quarters of an inch shorter than the other. He was wearing cor-
rective shoes later in life. The bad back of course should have kept him out
of the Navy. It did keep him out of the Army. He basically went through
an intensive campaign of learning how to work his back and get through.
He managed to get into the Navy with some political help. His dad
said, “This guy’s going to be on one of these bucking broncos”’—the PT
boats, which we all know from fast boats, are pounding you all the time.
He had to sleep every night on a board. He could never sleep on a bed his
whole life. It was always on a board because of his bad back, and then they
butchered him after he came out of the war. He spent a year in a hospital.
They never fixed it.
Then in 1953 he [was diagnosed with] Addison’s disease, which gets
so bad. The first episode is in 1947. He’s over with Pamela Harriman—
Pamela Churchill at the time. She takes him to her doctor, who says, “This
friend of yours isn’t going to last a year.” Then he gets another episode
in the South Pacific with Bobby, who saves his life and gets him to the
Okinawa Air Force Hospital, and that’s sort of when their bond begins.
The third time he has the last rites of the Church, in 1954 when he goes
in for his back operation, which goes bad with complications. He barely
survives. Even Nixon, who was in the [Harvard] class with him in’46, was
crying in the car. I talked to a Secret Service agent.
This guy was so close to the edge of life all the time, and I think that
explains his carpe diem behavior with women, his “heli’s a-poppin’, let’s
a7
WHERE WERE You?
have some fun’ attitude about every-
The inner Jack Kenn edy thing in life. “Let’s get through Me
day, that’s all we’re going to have.
was fe ar less romantic They lied—Ied Sorensen, all
and far tou gher. the rest of them, and India Edwards,
remember she came from Johnson's
campaign. They were putting out the
fact he had Addison's disease. If we
had known that and it had the full [coverage] like Page Three today in the
papers, if it had been all over the place, he wouldn't have gotten through.
The irony of the 1960 campaign is that Jack Kennedy was probably the only
Democrat who could beat Nixon; Nixon probably would have blown away
a Humphrey or a Stevenson. It must’ve driven Nixon completely crazy that
this guy he thought was a playboy could beat him and nobody else could
beat him. But that was a fact.
Jack Kennedy used the pictures to cover up who he was. He loved the
glamour shots. He loved being handsome. He loved Jackie being beauti-
ful. He loved all that photography. He loved the kids. He loved Macaroni
the pony. I think he liked that idea because it created a certain thing he
could manipulate and use. The inner Jack Kennedy was far less romantic
and far tougher. Think of Jack as Bobby; think of Bobby as Jack. Bobby
had to be the henchman. Bobby had to go into the room with Governor
Mike DiSalle of Ohio and beat him up, and he had to go to Governor .
Tawes of Maryland and basically beat him up. It was Mob behavior. This
was a Mob scene—not a mob scene with a crowd; it was a mobster type
of event, where they really scared these guys. Jack would say to Bobby,
“Make sure he’s publicly for me, and don't bring my name up,” and then
Bobby would do it because he loved his brother completely.
Jack was the guy giving the orders. In fact, when you talk to all the old
Irish Mafia, they say they came to love Bobby. Like Richard Hardwood,
all those guys came to love him, the guys who covered him. Jack scared
you, he was so tough, so brutal. He knew what he had to do, so he made
these decisions to put Johnson on the ticket, to pretend he'd never met
Richard Nixon. They'd been friends for twelve years, but he acted like he
never met him when he debated him. It’s cold, ice—he cut him. What
238
Curis MATTHEWS
he did with cutting the deal with Khrushchev: “Okay, I'll give you the
missiles in Turkey. I won't tell anybody about it.” That takes a real level of
toughness, even ruthlessness if you want to call it that. Bobby was accused
of it, but Jack was guilty of it. That’s the big difference.
The hard thing about studying Jack Kennedy is to understand his bru-
tality toward Jackie. Why didn't he feel some sympathy toward her, in the
way that he not only cheated on the marriage but he didn’t seem to care
that she knew about it? [When Jackie had a miscarriage at eight months
and JFK remained on his sailing trip] was the first time he showed real
coldness. He didn’t even come back. In fact, George Smathers, his friend
from the Senate, said, “I told him to go back or forget his political career”
because he would lose the marriage and everything, and hed never be able
to explain that kind of cold behavior.
We all live in compartments, and it’s healthy in some ways. We go
to the store, and we go to the dry cleaners. We know the fellow or the
woman there, but we dont have parties with them. We meet people in
certain places at work whom we dont hang out with. We live in different
compartments. Most people live like that in a benign way. Jack Kennedy
lived in compartments, almost like a Titanic, each compartment sealed off
from the others. The Irish Mafia werent Kennedy’s social friends. Dave
Powers was a handy man to have around, but he wasn't a pal socially. Ted
Sorensen was his intellectual blood bank but not a friend socially; he
never got invited at night.
The pals Kennedy hung around with—Ben Bradlee, Charlie Bartlett,
David Ormbsy-Gore, Smathers—they were his friends, and then you
can separate that group: the happily
married, faithful husbands and their
wives, who were couple-friends of Jack Kennedy lived in
him and Jackie. Then there were the
guys he screwed around with, like
Smathers. Smathers is a good exam- like a Titanic, each
ple of a guy he had another kind of compartment sealed off
relationship with.
Everything was subdivided, and fr om the others.
that’s the way he lived. These various
compartments, almost
239
WHERE WERE You?
people never met one another. The only one who could walk from com-
partment to compartment, from Jack to his serious girlfriends, like Mary
Meyer, and to the ones that weren't serious, and to Jackie, was Jack him-
self. He could do this by the hour. He would have a relationship with one
person, and then he'd go right back to Jackie. How can you explain it,
except that’s the fact?
Imagine these Knights of the Round Table, the Camelot image.
Everyone in that world Jack lived in had his sword pointed to the cen-
ter of the table, like the Knights of the Round Table. That’s why they're
round, to keep them equal, and he was in the middle. Everybody related
to him. Jackie didn’t relate to Mary Meyer, but he related to Mary Meyer,
and he related to Jackie and the girls, Fiddle and Faddle, at the office, and
whoever else was around, like Mimi Fahnestock or someone like that.
All those relationships were all pointing to him, but they never met.
The Irish Mafia never met the WASP friends. The WASP friends socially
never met the intellectuals. Arthur Schlesinger and Galbraith and those
guys were possibly hanging around with Ted Sorensen, but they werent
hanging around with Dave Powers and Billy Sutton. ‘They never got to
know each other. It was Jack’s world. Maybe it was a principality, but they
all seemed to like it. Red Fay’s daughter once said to me, “Nothing was as
thrilling as to get the phone call” that Jack’s on the line to talk to her dad.
He made that family light up, because Jack was the best buddy from the
old days, and the guys who were in the Navy with him said he was great |
company. They liked him. The thing about Jack [that] we keep forgetting
about our politics, it’s about liking the guy, and this country liked him.
~~ ie
I try to capsulize what the 60s were like for me and the Kennedy expe-
rience. A friend of mine in the Peace Corps, in Swaziland, was in the
village right next to mine, and we hung out a lot together. He teaches at
the University of New Orleans right now. One night he took his village
out onto the side of a hill, the people he’d been working with in world
development. They all sat there, and he said, “I want you to see something
tonight.” As they were sitting there in the dark—this is in Africa—he
pointed to a little light crossing the horizon. He said, “That’s us going to
240
CHRIS MATTHEWS
the Moon.” That was Kennedy.
The wonder and romance and
idealism of the Peace Corps
and the magic of going to
the Moon, that all happened
because of him.
The Peace Corps was a
great thing for me. The Peace
Corps was the greatest thing
in my life because what hap-
pened was: You go from being
a grad student somewhere to
all of a sudden you're out in the
middle of Africa, all of a sudden you're on a motorcycle, bopping around,
teaching business to a lot of African guys who are about fifty years old,
who become your best friends. You're like a son to them, and you establish
all these relationships. Then you hitchhike through Africa alone, and you
do things like go to Israel for a month—all different places I went. You
get to have the adventure of your lifetime. I would never have imagined
the Peace Corps without Kennedy. Jack Kennedy came in, and he was
so much the Peace Corps. It was his idea: adventure, fun, foreign travel,
doing good. Run it militarily in terms of discipline; do everything right.
It was great.
= ie
I was up at Holy Cross, and everybody’s Irish or Italian, a few French
Canadians—and all Catholic. We were up there in Worcester, Massachu-
setts, the heart of Massachusetts. I was going to check my mail, which
we always did after lunch, and some guy came up to me and said, “TIl bet
you five dollars Kennedy was just shot,” and I go, “What a terrible thing
to say.”
I walked over to Mr. Power’s world history class, and he said to the
class, “The president’s been shot. Anybody who wants to take a cut right
now, it won't be counted against you.” I think we had three cuts a semester.
I zoomed over to the Carlin Hall, a dorm, went down to the basement,
241
WHERE WERE YOU?
and found Cronkite on TV. I watched what everybody watched, and I
believe I watched*him say, “He’s dead.” I watched it right through the
night and the whole weekend. I was just taken with the whole story.
I have a very simple take on the Kennedy assassination. What you
don’t know, you don’t know. But what we do know is this, which | think
is critical: Lee Harvey Oswald had the job at the Book Depository weeks
before the motorcade route was established, so it was a crime of oppor-
tunity. He had this infatuation with Castro, having become disillusioned
with the Soviet Union when he was living there. Oswald came back [to
America] and became infatuated with Castro. Before the crime in Dallas,
he had gone down to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City,
perhaps trying to put together an escape route. Who knows? Td like to
see those records someday.
Oswald was caught apparently without a great plan. But that he was
there at the time of the route, the president going right under that win-
dow, shows it was happenstance. Oswald had a point of view. He'd gone
after Nixon at one point; he’d gone after Edwin Walker. He had a certain
left-wing view of things that was pro-Communist but disillusioned with
the Soviet Union. That’s all I know.
When I was writing my book on Kennedy, I came across this won-
derful little bit of film of this beautiful woman chasing after a guy and a
gurney. You just see the gurney, and she’s racing behind it. That last sense
of life and then after all that, it was just: “Well, he died. He was killed.” _
But the tough thing to do is to remember him when he alive and to
remember the New Frontier—not Camelot but the actual New Frontier
and how bracing politics was.
BAND
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Mort Sahl
In the late 50s and early ’60s, Mort Sahl was one of the hottest night-
club comedians on the circuit. While most comedians were delivering
stock jokes about wives and mothers-in-law, Sahl turned to the news-
papers for material. Joe Kennedy personally recruited Sahl to write
jokes that his son could use in his presidential campaign. In August
1960 Time magazine put the political satirist on its cover and called
him “the patriarch of a new school of comedians,” which also included
Lenny Bruce and Jonathan Winters. He was thirty-six years old when
President Kennedy was killed.
was being managed by the same fellow who managed Peter Lawford;
he managed just the two of us. Peter said his brother-in-law is going
to go for it. I was very friendly with Adlai Stevenson, who was theo-
retically the heir apparent, and I knew Mrs. Roosevelt, who said to me,
“Kennedy is going to try and get this, and he’s more profile than cour-
age.” Ihen his father, the ambassador, called me at the behest of Milt
Ebbins and Sinatra, who I saw every day, and he said to me, “I under-
stand you can write political humor better than anybody and that you
have the skill”’—this is almost
his words—“to put a stiletto
between Nixon’s fifth and sixth Mrs. Roosevelt said to
ribs instead of bludgeoning j
{9 e °
him. I want you to work for Me, Kennedy 1S ZOIN fo
Johnny.” Thats what he called try and get this, and he’s
him, by the way. So I said OK.
39
I took that call in the cutting more profile than courage.
24.5
WHERE WERE You?
haberdashery in: Beverly Hills,
so it would be confidential. There
were no cell phones.
I went to work, and I can
tell, as an old political script-
writer, that Republicans pay
you. They believe in business, so
the old man called me without
humor, without anything, and
just engaged me.
JFK had a great streak of
irony in the way he talked. He
was very cautious. All the things
people said about his reckless-
ness—it wasn't like that at all.
He said, “You like Castro?” I
said, “Oh, yeah. I’m a young guy.
I love the idea of revolution.” He’d say, “You don't find him unstable?”
He was like an inquisitor. He answered questions for me. When some-
body said, “Who are you after, and what are you pursuing?” Kennedy said,
“Everybody.” Like that. Or he said, “You know, you can profess loyalty to
me, but I know guys like you. You love Adlai Stevenson, and if you cant
get him you still won't go to me. You'll get Chester Bowles.”
I said, “You don't like Chester Bowles?”
He said, “He still wears button-down shirts. Why should I like—” He
switched what was at stake when you talked to him, and he had different
personas. For partying, he liked Gene Kelly. Talked politics to me, and
they hired me, and I wrote some jokes.
He was extremely bright and very aware that the liberals were going
to be more trouble than the other, conservative, party. He got that right
away. He was very smart, and he had a great sense of humor. There’s
nothing I put in front of him that he couldnt pick up and run with.
He understood all the material. I wrote for a lot of people relatively,
but he understood all the material, and he never objected. ‘The old man
objected on religious grounds, but he never objected. I gave him that
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Mort SAHL
joke where he said, “Is it going to hamper you to run as the first Catho-
lic candidate?” and I said, “You say to them: ‘It’s not the hereafter that
concerns me, it’s November 4th is driving me out of my mind.” He took
it right away, put it on like a cloak that fit. And: “You're going to meet
the pope. Are you going to kiss his ring?” “No, we’ve made a special
arrangement. I’m going to call him ‘Jack,’ he’s going to call me John.”
He took all that, you know. It was playful at the beginning, and then we
had some good arguments too. I asked about his friendship with Nixon
and everything. He stressed to me that you can learn from everybody.
He was very sharp, even gave me romantic advice. I was going out with
an actress then named Phyllis Kirk, and he said to me, “Bad pick. Is
a mover. You don't pick chicks that way.” I never asked him for any
romantic advice.
I was home having breakfast when I heard he had been shot. In Cali-
fornia, in the living room, I heard it, and then of course it plays out very
fast. The next day Ruby is there. I used to talk about it in the show: “He
shoots Oswald while he’s being guarded by twenty-four members of the
Dallas police force, or twenty-five if we count Ruby.” I was dangling the
bait even then. JFK was killed by a powerful domestic force. I believe it’s
such suppression that we can’t get on with the job of being America until
we clean our own house. Yeah, I do believe that. It’s cost Paes and
friendships and work.
I read Vince Bugliosi’s book. I know him very well, by the way. He
wrote that at Hefner’s house. Hefner gave him an office. I used to see him
up there all the time. You may notice that the book criticizes Garrison
I gave him that joke where he said, “Is it going to
hamper you to run as the first Catholic candidate?”
and I said, “You say to them: ‘Its not the hereafter
that concerns me, its November 4th is driving me
out of my mind.”
247
WHERE WERE You?
quite freely and gives me a pass. He characterizes me as a fair-minded
guy who tried to do his best. But I endorsed that investigation. In fact, I
was in it.
I had my own show on Metromedia, and I challenged the Warren
Report repeatedly. John Kluge said to me, “This is kind of redundant.
You've got to have new evidence.” So I went to New Orleans and met
Garrison, and I became an investigator in the office. We went to the trial
of Clay Shaw. I was very much his champion. If he [JFK] were here, we
would not have been at war in Vietnam. I don't think there would have
been a war. Our thesis in New Orleans was that he was removed because
he was ending the Vietnamese War. We operated on that thesis, and we
got in heavy water. It was very tough, career-wise. It was tough with your
friends. They found it hard to accept.
As far as Garrison doing it to advance his career, I can think of other
ways to advance yourself than saying the government killed the president.
I can think of better ways to take advantage of your career moves.
We had a back channel to Bobby through one of his college room-
mates, and I saw Bobby. Walter Sheridan was in there with Frank McGee,
taking arms against Garrison before he went to court. He might not have
been that militant if he didn’t run into all that opposition. The family
wasnt much help to us, although I did run into Jackie in New York after
we started the case, and she said to me that she knew. But they always
thought they had the privilege of when to say they knew. They didnt _
much say anything. They said clouded things to me. Sargent Shriver said,
“After all you’ve done for us—” Teddy said the same thing to me, but I
was operating pretty much alone in show business. They knew that the
whole thing was a cover story. The lone assassin; nobody believes that, but
they know that it’s unwise to say this. It’s taking on a sea of troubles. But
if you dont get jus-
l tice for Kennedy, you
Our thesis in New Orleans was cant get justice for the
country. I didn't realize
that when I met him.
was ending the Vietnamese War. He came to be because
he was a man of peace,
that he was removed because he
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Mort SAHL
and the last speech, at American University, is documentation of what
he was trying to do.
Who was responsible? A powerful domestic force, which has more
power than ever? Oswald was an FBI informant who was used as a patsy.
You know when we got him—or when they got him—in his wallet was
the unlisted number of the special agent in charge of the FBI office in
Dallas. No, he was just there to make noises. I mean, it’s almost insulting:
passing out Communist leaflets in New Orleans, establishing an identity,
trying to buy a car in New Orleans. You don't have any credit.
But we have to look back on that time. Bobby told me that General
LeMay raised his fists to President Kennedy in the arguments over Cuba.
What’s happened is, in the interim, art has characterized guys like that,
like LeMay, as crazy and willful rather than working toward another goal.
Look where war has taken this country. Look at the lack of humanity
since Kennedy and where it’s taken the country. We betrayed him. ‘The
American University speech, remember? “We breathe the same air as the
Russians, and we all treasure a future for our children, to end all wars.”
What are there, sixteen thousand men in Vietnam when he’s murdered?
And wound up with that being our major effort. Of course the clincher is
that you can't see the material.
The president’s brain is missing in the archives. You cant see any of
this. What did Johnson say, seventy-five years? And the way the thun-
der came down around Garrison because he opened up—the only law
enforcement officer who opened it up. I dont know. Have people forgot
what America was like, how optimistic it was?
Clay Shaw got acquitted because he perjured himself about Oswald
and about David Ferrie. Who were they? Who were the Cubans? Who
were the guys who drove to Dallas the night before in an ice storm? Why
did they have to be there? Who was Ruby? Characterized as a patriot by
the press, sent in to silence that guy. Ruby begs Warren to take him to
Washington so he can tell the truth, and Warren says he doesn't have that
power. A commission to solve the death of the president that never met as
a body. We owe Jack Kennedy the truth, and we owe the American people
the truth. There’s going to be no future for our kids if we don't do it. We've
become somebody else. It’s an expensive lie.
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WHERE WERE You?
I thought it took pri-
ority. It was a tough deci-
sion, but the money won't
do you any good, and the
good-looking actress won't
do you any good if you sell
your country out. You cant
do it. You come home with
a different country under
your arm. I became a dif-
ferent person because a lot
of different people didn't
want to employ me. The
William Morris Agency
didn’t want to book me.
People turned against
money because that’s an
expensive lie. It involves the aristocracy of this country, who took part in
an unlawful act. Until we clean that up, we'll never be who we were. But
he set the tone. I wasn’t a worshiper, as you know. I kidded him pretty
good too. But I brought that up because I thought it was imperative. It
did cost me a lot of work. Ironically enough, the liberals made me unem-
ployable. They didn't want to hear that. They used to be people that would
fight for their rights. They were eroded.
Garrison’s the bravest man I ever met. That they've continued to dis-
credit him and haven't looked into what he brought up only underlines
to me that we were on the right track then. We were ready to go, but the
people weren't ready for it. I mean certain people in positions of power.
Look what happened to the country. What happened to me, that’s minor.
What happened to the country? We're not the country that does that to
other people. We bought into perpetual war and brutality and a general
mediocrity. That never would have happened when he was there. He's the
guy who brought Pablo Casals to the White House.
Sixteen thousand men in Vietnam and aiming to get out. McNa-
mara knew that too and didn't say it. Then we have the tapes of Johnson
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Mort SAHL
saying to McNamara, “Now is the time to go in and take them out, or all
countries will go.” Who benefited the most from Kennedy’s death? Who
suppressed the information? By the time we get to Chicago, it’s Berlin,
not Washington. I think it’s very evident, or I never would have done this.
You know, I’m not a Kennedy worshipper. He doubted I was even going
to vote for him, and of course he was only ten years older than me—
Jim is like Jack. He stands up for what he thought was right, and the
credentials of Garrison are where he came from. He was an FBI agent, a
colonel in the Army. He got radicalized at forty-five because his president
was murdered before his eyes and he wanted to know why. That’s why
he’s genuine. Ihe social democrats were born on the left and didn’t have
to earn their way over there. They had to earn their way over to the right.
That’s why they’re so careful. That’s why there are no candidates.
A lot of people thought I went crazy. But by the same token, I won-
dered why they don't go crazy, why they can rationalize with whoever’s
there. It’s the same thing that happens when you work at a network. If
somebody's son gets the job, you say, “Maybe it'll work out.” You cant do
that. You cant be a moral man and do that. Every moral man knows this.
If he’s Jewish, he thinks only they know it, but everybody knows it. We
are formed by our families. Bobby was the toughest guy I ever knew, and
it’s because the old man made him the enforcer. He had to bring home
a head on a stick, make sure it wasnt blamed on Jack, and he’ never got
thanked. ‘That’s what happens. If you're left to be free and do good things,
you wind up like Sarge Shriver, one of the most heartbreaking things that
ever happened.
When Garrison was at his worst off, I went to George McGovern
and said, “We're in a terrible
spot. We want the truth,
whatever it is. Doesn't have
to be our truth, but we want A lot of p eop le thought I
the facts.” He listened to Wwent crazy. But by the same
me, and he said, “I’m sorry,
Mort, but, your hero Jack i:
Kennedy wasn't a very good dont £0 crazy.
president.” I said, “Is that
token, I wondered why they
251
WHERE WERE You?
punishable by death?” ‘That was the end of my relationship with George
McGovern.
I was an unlikely guy to be a comedian. America’s an unlikely country
to emerge, but I took it at its word. That’s why I’m here, and that’s why
I won't abandon it. It will sink us all. I may have a temporary financial
advantage out of it, but that isn't going to do it—that'’s nothing you can
leave your kids. You can leave them money, but you've got to leave them
more than that. You’ve got to leave them a thirst for the potential of this
country. The president was willing to do that and become a traitor to his
class to do it. That guy I met on a very random afternoon | didnt think
would have that influence.
I’m surprised that all the people who benefited by being there didnt
speak up. Schlesinger, McGeorge Bundy—they didn't behave like his
friends. On one very sorrowful night, Garrison said to me, “None of
us ever knew him, Mort, except you.” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Well, for
God’s sake, didn’t he have better friends than that?” I asked that of the
audience too.
252
Cynthia Wegmann
In November 1963 Cynthia Wegmann was a fourteen-year-old student
at the Academy of Sacred Heart School in New Orleans. Four years later
her father, Edward Wegmann, defended family friend Clay Shaw against
charges brought by District Attorney Jim Garrison that named Shaw as
a ringleader in a conspiracy to kill the president. Cynthia assisted her
father in preparing the case; she is now a successful New Orleans
defense attorney.
was at Sacred Heart—third prep or fourth prep, we called it—seventh or
eighth grade, and we were getting ready for what is a Sacred Heart tradi-
tion of bringing Christmas baskets and presenting them to the archbishop
to give away to the poor. Every family or every girl at the Heart would
make a basket that would feed a family for Thanksgiving and then give
them something for breakfast and lunch the next day. We were sitting there
on the bleachers in the gym, and
Mother Johnson came out with
her little wooden clacker and
d Excuse me, guict quici
and told us that the president
had been shot. I do believe that
we were then sent home, so we
went home and watched the TV
for the next—forever.
Ihe president had come
here before, and I think I was
one of the girls who presented
him with roses, but we felt like
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WHERE WERE You?
we were all giving him flowers. It was like youd lost a friend. He was so
handsome, and she was so beautiful. It was just terrifying. Whats going to
happen to the world? What's next? How can this happen? Just terrible—and
then the poor children, little John with his little salute and black jacket
with the boots on backwards? That was just not good.
I don’t know. It let LBJ do what LBJ did, but Kennedy himself was
a great equalizer. He could talk his way out of anything or end anything,
and I think the civil rights movement might have been easier if people
could have looked at him and followed his lead. The country was totally
stunned. We'd won two world wars, and then we named our first young
president, who didnt like to wear a hat. It definitely changed the way the
world thought or the way we felt. We no longer felt invincible. If some-
body could kill our president on our streets in the South, then what else
could happen? And then what?
Clay Shaw was very much a gentleman.
He had a wonderful booming voice—
we sometimes call it the old-fashioned
“Creole voice,” with that modulation
I wish I could imitate. He was bril-
liant. He wrote plays. He restored the
French Quarter—he really started it.
He was, along with friends, responsible
for them not tearing down the French
Market. He restored, I think, at least
seven houses. That’s how my father and
he came to know each other, because
Daddy was an estate lawyer and trans-
actional lawyer. He was Clay’s attorney
to do all the real estate turns that he
did. Hed buy one, flip it, spend the
money on the next one, and restore that one. He really had a sense of style.
Clay Shaw at Tulane
Clay tried to figure out why he was targeted, and the only thing he
could think of was, OK, he had an international reputation, which would
254
CYNTHIA WEGMANN
make Garrison's persona or reputation go all across the newspapers inter-
nationally. More particularly, he describes in his diary—and he did in
Esquire magazine as well—two incidents: One, he witnessed Garrison
throw a glass of wine in his wife’s face at Galatoire’s—a serious faux pas, a
no-no. The other was that he stopped Garrison from molesting a twelve-
year-old boy at the New Orleans Athletic Club.
Who knows what Garrison thought? All you know is that he con-
cocted this miasma of lies and stories, a lot of which was based on Mark
Lane’s “triangulation of crossfire” stuff. He had to have a scapegoat.
Because Clay Shaw was such a ginormous man in international circles,
as well as in stature, and because Garrison knew that Clay was alone but
for his mother, who was in Ruston, he went after him, hoping he could
hound him and that he might commit suicide or something before Gar-
rison could be shown up to be a fraud.
What he [Perry Raymond Russo] did afterward in the press was to
say, “I was under hypnotic suggestion.” They put Perry Raymond Russo
under sodium pentothal and hypnosis three times by the then-coroner,
whose name was Chetta. He said in the beginning, and you can read the
transcripts that he said, “I don’t remember,” “No, I don't know any Clay
Shaw,” “No, I dont know any Clem Bertrand,” “I dont know.” Finally,
by the third time, he was like, “Okay, okay. I give up.” But Russo did
recant. It was three times under hypnosis, and if you read those tran-
scripts, it’s pretty incredible. Russo being put under hypnotic suggestion
not once, not twice, but three times before he put him on the trial was
pretty amazing. All of that came because Bill Gurvich, who was work-
ing in the DA’s office, said, “I can't take it anymore.” He quit his job—he
had five children or more—and brought Daddy this information. He was
pretty phenomenal.
The man [Garrison] came on television during the trial and before,
and he just looked so earnest. Everything he said sounded so convinc-
ing. I remember asking my daddy, saying, “Daddy, he doesn't look like he’s
lying,” and Daddy said, “He makes it up on one side of his head, shuts
that side off, and believes it on the other.” I went to law school after Clay
was acquitted to save the world from the likes of Jim Garrison. My only
problem was, when I went to work in criminal court, I believed everybody.
255
WHERE WERE You?
I cant say [why Garrison
I went to law school after did it]. I should know bet-
ter than to say what I think
Clay Was acquitted to save somebody else thought, but I
the world from the likes of think Garrison had cleaned up
the prostitution in the French
J im Garrison. Quarter, and he needed some
other mission. In’67, four and a
half years later, he comes across
this Mark Lane book that connects Castro to New Orleans and comes
up with this story. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, and Gar-
rison arrested Clay on February 27, 1967—I think he was only booked on
March 1, 1967. But by that time, Garrison's sweep of the prostitution on
Bourbon Street was over, so he had a new mission.
Clay actually talked about the fact that he didn't know why he had
been targeted. There was, if you read the transcripts, some mention of
some “Clem Bertrand” meeting with Oswald and this guy [David Fer-
rie] with carpet fibers glued to his head to make eyebrows. Somehow or
another, “Clem B” and “Clay S” became “Clay Shaw.”
Daddy had gone to Atlanta or right outside of Atlanta to open or to
seal the deal for the building of a restaurant, Brennan's of Atlanta, which
I think subsequently burned. He came back, he’d been on the plane, it was
raining, he had walking pneumonia, and Mother greets him at the front
door. We all did. Daddy didn't take his hat off—and Daddy always took
his hat off when he came in the house. He goes to the phone because
Mother had told him, “Clay’s been calling you. Billy’s been calling. You
have to answer the phone.” Daddy picks up the phone, and he says, “I’m
in no mood!” and hangs up.
The phone rings back, and whoever's on the other end—lI assumed it
was Clay—says, “Don't hang up, Edward. This is no joke. I’m at the DA's
office. They’re about to arrest me for conspiring to assassinate the presi-
dent of the United States.” Daddy says, “Okay, I'll be right there,” walks
out the door, and goes two blocks, and comes back around, and he goes,
“Where’s the DA’s office?” He was a civil lawyer.
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CYNTHIA WEGMANN
When Clay was arrested, I was seventeen. I was a senior at the Acad-
emy of the Sacred Heart, which is on St. Charles Avenue—wide-eyed
and innocent. It seriously made life different. I was followed by two men
in Garrisons employ. Daddy was followed. Even my brother, who was
twelve, was followed. I think they gave up on Dirk after a while. They sat
outside Sacred Heart, and of course the first thing I did when I got out of
Sacred Heart was—didn't even change my shoes—just took my bag and
went over to Ottoman Stables, where I rode and taught every afternoon.
They sat outside the barn and waited for me to come out. I don’t know
what they thought I was going do. But once you realized who it was, it
would be too much fun to get on my little fat red Arabian and take off the
other direction and leave them like, 444444?” They never turned around,
though, and went the wrong way, down this street. I don't get it, but they
didnt. You know, you have these suspicions. Like, okay, so the seventeen-
year-old-at-the-convent girl is going to be doing what?p—smoking pot? I
have no idea. Instead I was riding horses and chewing hay straws.
It [Shaw’s trial] was like a three-ring circus. It was in Judge Hagger-
ty’s court, and there was Daddy, Billy Wegmann, Irving Diamond, who
had this wonderful voice too, and the jury. It took them a long time to
seat a jury, but after the jury was seated, I think the whole thing lasted six
weeks. Garrison gave the opening statement, but Jim Alcock, Garrison’s
assistant DA, ran the trial and did the closing statement. It was amazing
because, as it went on, more and more news people became more and
more on the side of right, not of might. 1 met some very nice people, lots
of reporters. I dont think Mom went except maybe to hear some piece
that Daddy did.
When you heard Garrison after the trial was over in the afternoon, I
said, “Daddy? How can he say that?” Daddy said, “Just don't worry. Just wait.”
“Dont hang up, Edward. This is no joke. Im at the
DAs office. Theyre about to arrest me for conspiring
to assassinate the president of the United States.”
ao
WHERE WERE You?
I believed in: Clay’s innocence completely. What did I think when
the jury went out? I said, “I’m pretty sure it will be fine.” Then I called my
friend who was sitting there with me at that time, Tennessee Lynn, and
she was like, “We were holding hands and praying and promising God
that if he’d just get Clay off, we'd do charity work for the next twenty
years.” She said, “I didn’t do any of it, but I think you did some.”
The jury went out, and forty-five minutes later, enough time for
everybody to go to the bathroom, have a cup of coffee, and take one vote,
he was acquitted. Three weeks or so after that, Garrison arrested him
for perjury. Then Daddy started, and luckily I was able to help him with
that—even though I wasn't a lawyer yet—to do a civil rights complaint,
which was filed in federal court, an injunction against him for going for-
ward with this next heinous trial.
Daddy thoroughly believed in what he was doing. He believed him.
He believed in him, and he was going to stand there and stand between
Clay and anybody who wanted to smear him. So for two years, from the
time that Clay was arrested until the trial was over, and then even further,
when we filed the complaint in federal court for the injunction to stop
Garrison from persecuting him for alleged perjury, that’s all Daddy did.
He asked me not to go away to
college because he wanted me to
stay here. He wanted the fam-
; ily to be together. It took a little
fe orty-five minutes late r, longer than we thought.
enough time for every- The trial to enjoin Garrison
from going forward, it was based
body fo 80 to the bath- on a civil rights violation, where
room, havea cup of coffee, Garrison had to know that he
was wrong and that Clay was
telling the truth because of this,
acquitted. Three weeks that, and the other thing. I think
The jury went out, and
and take one vote, he was
Or SO after that, Garrison Daddy’s complaint Wa fifteen,
twenty pages. It lays it all out.
arrested him fi or pe rjury. Christenberry took testimony.
Christenberry was a very careful
258
CYNTHIA WEGMANN
judge, and he wrote a
thirty-page opinion that
ripped Garrison up one
side and down the other
and said, “No, you can't go
forward.” Then that was
appealed by Garrison.
We sided with
Christenberry of course,
and that went up to the
Fifth Circuit Court of
Appeals. They decided
with us and stopped ‘ :
the perjury trial. Then Edward Wegmann
we filed a complaint—I
think I was a lawyer by this time—to recover damages from Garrison
and his buddies, Truth or Consequences, which had put up money for
the prosecution or persecution, if you prefer, of Clay. In the midst of that,
seeking damages to restore Clay to the finances he had lost during all this
time, Clay's mother died, and then Clay died, and since Clay had no chil-
dren, no descendants and no direct ascendants, under a quirk of Louisiana
law the perjury action or the defamation action was considered a per-
sonal action, which could only be pursued by ascendants or descendants
directly. That has been changed since then, but if not [for that] we would
have won. We made it through the Fifth Circuit, and the decision was
very heavily weighted in our favor. They said no because it’s a civil rights
action; Louisiana law doesn’t govern who can inherit. Then the next thing
was to go to the US Supreme Court. We lost by one vote, five to four. It
[Christenberry’s language] was extremely strong, and he excoriated him.
It was like a vindication.
i
In the beginning, he [Shaw] was fine. He once described it as a Kaf-
kaesque experience. He couldn't live in his house for two months because
Garrison had people stationed outside of his house. The news people
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WHERE WERE You?
were hounding him too, so he
lived with a widow woman, as
she described herself. He said
everybody was very kind to him.
He said he wasnt a religious
man, but he ended up going to
The Sentinel, which is a retreat
house, and felt a great lifting
of his spirit during the middle
of this persecution. ‘Toward the
end, he lost his spirit, but during
it he was sure that he would be
acquitted and that he might be
able to get back some of his calm
and go back to writing plays and
short stories. He had retired in order to write.
He had an off-off-Broadway play. He then sold one of the proper-
ties he had in the Quarter in order to fund the costs. He meant to travel
and enjoy his life before that long. His mother was older of course, and
she died the year before he died. Clay died in 74. The stress is definitely
attributable. He died of lung cancer; the stress probably exacerbated that.
His chain-smoking didn’t help, but the stress certainly had an enormous
effect on that. He was quite a good man.
Daddy had Clay cremated because he knew, given Garrison's propen-
sity and what Garrison had claimed all along, that Garrison would have
had the body exhumed in order to try to prove he was killed or committed
suicide—because he kept saying, “Everybody’s dead. This person's dead,
this person’s dead.” They were all old. They were dying. That’s why Clay
was cremated, and he was buried in an unmarked grave near his mother
in Ruston. I don’t know if it’s still unmarked, because the stigma has left,
but he was buried in an unmarked grave next to his mother. People were
still making threats as Clay was dying of lung cancer. Daddy didn't want
him to be disturbed in any way.
They reelected him [Garrison], just “Yep, no problem.” ‘Then they
elected him to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, on which he served,
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CYNTHIA WEGMANN
How can you think the most heinous crime of the
century could be committed by a group of Looney
Tunes and one nice man?
but I don't think he ever wrote an opinion. I appeared in front of him
once, and he didn't ask me a single question.
People thought he must have something. The conspiracy theorists
abound, and where it comes from, I dont know. How can you think the
most heinous crime of the century could be committed by a group of
Looney Tunes and one nice man? But they did, and I still, since this time,
have gotten phone calls from people saying, “Explain this.” It’s like, “All I
can tell you is: It’s wrong.” How can you keep something like this under
wraps with that many people involved? You can't. Clay was so well known
that, if you and I were in a restaurant and he walked in, he would tower
over us. I think he was six-foot-four, giant shoulders, big barrel chest, a
shock of white hair, and a voice that had this wonderful timbre to it. You
couldn't mistake him for anybody else. I don't get it.
Rosemary James
In 1963 twenty-six-year-old reporter Rosemary James was in Charles-
ton, South Carolina, working for the News and Courier. Afterwards she
moved to New Orleans and became a reporter for the New Orleans
States-Item and WWL-TV. From 1966 to 1969 she covered District Attor-
ney Jim Garrison’s trial of her friend Clay Shaw. She later cofounded
the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society and wrote a book about the Big
Easy. Today she and her husband, Joe, own Faulkner House Books, an
independent bookstore, and live in William Faulkner’s old apartment in
Pirate’s Alley. |
didn’t move to New Orleans until the end of December 1963, about
a month after the president was assassinated. I had come down here
to visit friends and fell in love with the city, went by the Szates-Item,
asked for a job. When I got home, I had one, so I arrived here and went
to work on the first day of 1964. When the president was killed, I was .
in Charleston. I was working for the Charleston Evening Post and the
Charleston News and Courier at the time. I was on my way home for lunch,
and I turned the radio on. That was the first knowledge I had of it. I didn’t
believe it at first. I was shocked. I just didn’t believe it at first. I was sort of
like Walter Cronkite; he didn’t want to believe it when Dan Rather called
him and said that he was dead.
It all happened because New. Orleans District Attorney Jim Gar-
rison, a very flamboyant character, who had national ambitions, was on a
plane ride back from Washington with Senator Russell Long, and Long
was on the Warren Commission and wasn’t satisfied with the conclu-
sions of the Warren Commission. He thought they didn't go far enough
with the investigation, and he suggested to Garrison that he should pick
RosEMARY JAMES
up this investigation and go
full speed ahead with it. He
told him he thought that
the New Orleans jurisdic-
tion would work because
Oswald had been here. He
told Garrison quite frankly
that this could make his
national reputation, so that’s
how it got started.
Jack Dempsey was our
police reporter at criminal
district court, and every day
he sent these little dispatches by teletype—that’s how long ago it was—
and he said, “Such and such is going on, and I keep hearing that Garrison
is investigating the assassination of John F. Kennedy.” After about three
of these messages, the then-city editor and managing editor suggested
that we look into it more seriously..We tried to talk to Garrison, and he
wasn't available; he wouldn't make himself available. The criminal district
court judges had what’s known as a “finds and fees” fund, and the district
attorney had access to that fund. He was using that fund to finance trips
to Dallas and for investigative purposes, and we were able to go to the
records of that fund and find that he was indeed spending a lot of time
in Dallas and other pertinent places. We did a very brief story, not much
longer than a couple of pages. | finally got him on the phone. I said, “I
have something I would like to show you. May I come and visit with you?”
He said yes. I gave him the story. He read it, and he smiled and said, “I
will neither confirm nor deny.” That’s all he would say.
I said, “Well, we’re going to publish this story.” Then he said, “PII nei-
ther confirm nor deny.” So we went with it the next day, and we believed
that he wanted us to publish this story. If I had to do it all over again, we
probably wouldn't have published. I would have said, “You know, this is a
bunch of—”
All the news people came in from various and sundry places, even
from Izvestia and Pravda. He had a major news conference, and then
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WHERE WERE You?
= everything died down. People
If Thad to do it all over went back to their respective news
organizations. He really loved
again, we probably a headline, he really did love it.
wouldnt have published. He loved all the attention, so he
would have a new news confer-
ence, and he would give us a new
theory about what actually hap-
pened. This went on and on and on. I didnt make a judgment that he
was really nuts until he arrested Clay Shaw, and then my suspicions were
confirmed by that action.
Garrison had a very convoluted, byzantine sort of mind, but he had
a history that wasn't particularly pleasant. First of all, for many Garrison
was considered a closet gay. That wasn’t generally known in the commu-
nity, but a lot of people who knew him thought he was. Here’s Clay Shaw,
whom I knew; he’s socially acceptable, he’s doing all kinds of wonderful
things business-wise. He’s getting a lot of positive attention, and he’s gay.
Even though that was not a subject that was generally discussed, there's
a feeling that Garrison was maybe a little jealous. Also, Garrison had a
known reputation for beating up his wife. He was a wife abuser. One
night, Garrison and his wife were having dinner at Brennan’s, which was
at the time operated by Ella Brennan, as opposed to the other branch of
the family. Ella and Clay were very close friends, and they were having
dinner together. Garrison slapped his wife rather brutally, and Clay got up
and went over and stopped it and asked them to leave. Garrison was very
abusive. There were harsh words then.
Garrison was the kind of guy who craved headlines. For example, it
was well known in the city that he had a relationship with and hung out
with working girls, but in order to get crusader kind of headlines, every
once in a while he would round them up and put them in jail, which is
about as hypocritical as you can get, because the next night he'd be drink-
ing with them, and Bourbon Street had classy drinkers back in those days
and classy strippers. He spent a lot of time down there. We all knew that
side of Garrison, that he was hypocritical and also that he was a headline
chaser.
264
ROSEMARY JAMES
‘There were two people I knew very well who were very good sources
of mine when I was covering Garrison. One was an investigator, an ex-cop
named Pershing Gervais, who was a really interesting character. He had
been Garrisons chief investigator, and he was the first person who told
me the whole thing was a crock. The next person who told me that was a
criminal district court judge who had been Garrison's first assistant DA,
and he said, “That is such a crock; I can’t even begin to tell you how stupid
you all are to be covering it at all.” Those were his words, but the coverage
went on because he would come up with some exotic new theory.
He had a triangulation of crossfire. Then he had some right-wing
Texans. Another theory was that David Ferrie, an ex-pilot, was part of
a conspiracy, that he had been killed off. In fact, Ferrie probably killed
himself by his diet. He did nothing but drink black coffee and eat Jell-O.
That was his total diet. I interviewed him, and I know he was a real kook.
At first Garrison had dismissed him, but once he died of a heart attack
according to the coroner, Garrison said he was the most important wit-
ness and maybe his case had been destroyed. ‘That brought a whole new
flock of headlines. Those were just a few examples. There must have been
at least twenty different theories that he proposed, and that’s why people
with any judgment early on thought the guy was a kook. Then when Clay
Shaw was arrested, they washed their hands of the whole thing because
he [Shaw] was so respected in the community in so many ways. Ihe peo-
ple Clay Shaw hired to represent him were first-class and had a great
reputation in the community. Half the community, at least, abandoned
Garrison as a serious investigator.
The reason it came to trial? You need to look at the law of Louisiana,
which gives district attorneys enormous power, more so than most states.
For example, a district attorney without a grand jury indictment can file a
bill of information against someone and bring that person to trial. Gener-
ally speaking, district attorneys can do what they want in Louisiana. There
are few stops on their power. Another reason was that it was entertaining
news coverage for the general populace—this has been a community and
a state that really enjoyed politicians who would entertain them. Garrison,
whatever else he was—nuts, cynical, whatever—he was very entertaining.
I think it was allowed to get that far because of his personal charisma.
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WHERE WERE You?
New Orleans history was a great piece of it. When he arrested Clay
Shaw, you got a real dichotomy in the community: those who thought
he was seriously nuts, and those who were still in his corner for whatever
reason. For example, there was a group of businessmen that formed some-
thing called Truth or Consequences to fund the DA’s investigation so that
he wouldn't have to get money that had to be reported. This was strictly
against the law, but they went forward with it anyhow, and that’s how he
was funded for a lot of his foolishness. I think they were just political sup-
porters of Jim Garrison’s frankly. They were actually formed before Clay
Shaw was arrested, but it may have been that Garrison talked to them
and asked them to fund him so that he could continue his investigation
without oversight.
Every time someone would mention that possibly the Mob was
involved in this, Garrison got all out of sorts with them, tried them before
the grand jury, and got them cited for contempt or jail for something
or another. Garrison was threatening to haul a New York Times reporter
before the grand jury who strongly believed that the entire conspiracy
was initiated and funded by that whole crowd. ‘They had a great motive
because they had lost a lot of property in Havana and had put a lot of
faith in the Bay of Pigs event, which turned out to be a disaster. There was
strong feeling that they had the best motive of all, but if you mentioned
that, Garrison would get all up in arms and try to punish you. He came to
me and said that he was going to bring me before the grand jury. | said, “If
I were you, I wouldn't. I have a lot of stuff I’ve never reported about you.” —
That was the end of that.
The day after Clay was acquitted, Garrison filed a perjury charge
against him, and federal judge Herbert threw that out. After it was all
Garrison said to me, “If I were you, I wouldnt.
Ihave a lot of stuff Tve never reported about you.”
That was the end of that.
266
ROSEMARY JAMES
over, I never had harsh words
with him again. In fact, 1 Jf was a terrible miscarriage
once had some dealings with
a civil court judge represent- ofj ustice agains f Clay Shaw.
e a chent remarkedhhiat = n
this judge would sign any-
thing that was put before him on behalf of the opposition, and he cited
me for contempt. By that time, Garrison had become an appeals court
judge, and he ruled in my favor. He could have been really mean. He had
a great ability to keep a conversation going with a person, but it was a ter-
rible miscarriage of justice against Clay Shaw.
After Clay was acquitted, he died not long thereafter, a broken man.
He was worn out from the whole thing. Clay had been ready to retire as a
gentleman. He wasn't wealthy, but he had put aside a lot of money; he had
restored a lot of properties and had them as income-producing properties.
He planned to spend the rest of his life writing. He had written a couple
of plays, and he was actually a good writer. That’s what he wanted to do
with his life, but this investigation and the ultimate trial and the cost of
attorneys bankrupted him. He was just worn out, and I think the stress
possibly caused him to succumb to cancer earlier than he would have
otherwise.
Regarding the movie JFK, Oliver Stone and I had some verbal con-
frontation via the Times-Picayune. He bought Garrison's line of gar-
bage hook, line, and sinker, and the film he produced was exactly what I
expected—a travesty. First thing he did was cast Kevin Costner, who is
known as a kind of all-American good guy, as Jim Garrison, which was
the beginning of the travesty as far as I’m concerned. It was a terrible film.
Oliver Stone is another nut. He and Garrison were in good company.
I never spoke to Stone personally after the film was made. My only
exchanges with him were through letters to the editor of the Times-
Picayune, but if I had been able to see him personally after seeing the film,
I would have told him what I thought. PI tell you what Pershing Ger-
vais said. He and I went to see the film together at the Times-Picayune's
request. Pershing Gervais had been Garrison's chief investigator at one
time, an ex-policeman, someone who had been a great information source
267
WHERE WERE You?
throughout my journalistic career, and a great critic of Garrison. They
wanted us to go and see it and then be interviewed after the film.
When the film was over, the Times-Picayune reporter said, “Mr. Ger-
vais, what did you think of the film?” He said, “It was a pile of shit.” Those
were his exact words, excuse my French. Then he asked me my thoughts,
and I said, “Ditto.” Those were our comments about the film. It portrayed
Clay in a way that wasn’t indicative of the man. It made him seem like
a flamboyant queen who was involved in orgy-type dinner parties and
things of that nature. It gave a false impression of a really decent man.
Not that he would have been against costuming for Mardi Gras or any-
thing like that—and in fact he did. He was a full member of the commu-
nity, but Oliver Stone just completely distorted the truth.
The whole thing now seems so surreal; it really does. I think about all
the Damon Runyon-esque sort of characters who were part and parcel of
the whole drama, one of whom was Dean Andrews, who was a two-bit
lawyer who probably couldn't earn a living if it hadn't been for represent-
ing lesser Mob figures or Mob-oriented figures at least. I’m completely
convinced that Dean Andrews was called by someone and told to go to
Dallas and represent Jack Ruby. I’m completely convinced that he told the
truth about that. I’m also convinced that he made up the “Clay Bertrand”
name to avoid telling the FBI and other investigators who questioned
him who actually called him. I think he knew precisely who that person
was, and he was trying to protect that person, but it backfired in that Clay |
Shaw was judged to be Clay Bertrand by Garrison for whatever reason.
Before he died, Dean Andrews told me it definitely wasn’t Clay Shaw.
The other thing was that no one ever looked for another candidate other
than Clay Shaw because they believed that Garrison just made it up on
the spot.
My best friend at the time in the journalism world was David Chan-
dler, who had been on the States-Item with me and then went to work for
Time-Life as a reporter for Life magazine. He was on the inside of the
Garrison investigation at the time that we broke the story and was think-
ing that he had an exclusive for Life about Garrison's investigation. He
was also there during all the talking about Clay Shaw and why Garrison
thought he should arrest Clay Shaw. Thereafter he would have nothing
268
RosEMARY JAMES
to do with Garrison,
because he said it was
such a ridiculous piece
of phony logic that
he used to try to get
Clay Shaw as another
headline-producing
event.
I believe the Mob
was the best possibil-
ity of a conspiracy,
and there may have
been some other ele-
ments involved such as the Teamsters—that’s what I believe—possibly
even some disillusioned right-wing Cubans: some elements of the thing
that Garrison kept presenting here and there and yonder as individual
theories, like fourteen Cubans shooting from the storm drains. That was
one of the theories du jour. Every day there was something new, so it
became harder and harder to give any credence to Garrison. However, I
do think there was a conspiracy, and I think that, because of Garrison, it
was never fully uncovered. I think the Mob put together a scheme that he
was part of. That’s what I think.
I do feel that Marcello was treated unfairly in several instances by the
feds. There was one trial, for example, involving a nightclub called The
Crash Landing. The evidence and the witnesses presented by the fed-
eral prosecutor in that case were such a put-up job that it was obvious
to everybody in the courtroom and certainly obvious to the journalists
covering the thing. I did some reporting on that after the fact, and one or
two of the witnesses stated that. The federal judge in the case said: “I agree
with what was said by the media last night—that the witnesses are sus-
pect.” That was one example of how Marcello was treated unfairly. I think
he was deprived of his civil rights when he was deported to Guatemala.
‘They just grabbed him, put him on a plane, and dropped him in Guate-
mala, and if it hadn't been for one of his friends, Lisa Mosca, the owner
of Mosca’s Restaurant, he might still be cooling his heels down there. She
269
WHERE WERE You?
sent him money. She was able to get him a big sum of money, and he was
able to get back into the country as a result of her help. There are lots of
reasons to think Marcello has been treated unfairly in many instances
because if an ordinary citizen were treated that way, there'd be a public
outcry. Whether he facilitated a conspiracy, I don’t know. I really dont.
I’m a Yellow Dog Democrat. I’ve never voted for a Republican, and
I love my life. Kennedy was a wonderful image for America at a certain
period in our history that was well needed, very much needed. We needed
a heroic character and someone to fall in love with politically, and he
seemed to fit that bill perfectly. I dont think he was the greatest presi-
dent we’ve ever had. Despite all we’ve learned, I still think he was a good
man. I think he had enormous challenges to face while he was president,
including the Cuban Missile Crisis. He made a terrible mistake with the
Bay of Pigs, probably. He should have followed through on the commit-
ment. He made some enemies then, and Bobby Kennedy made a whole
lot more enemies for him with his pursuit of the Teamsters Union and
several other avenues of investigation that he worked on. Given the John
Kennedy I know today, including all of his peccadilloes with women, I
would still vote for him.
270
Mike Kettenring
In the 1960s Mike Kettenring was a reporter for WDSU television in New
Orleans, but in the summer of ’63 he worked at Reilly Coffee, where one
of his coworkers was a twenty-three-year-old machine greaser named
Lee Oswald. At WDSU Kettenring worked on the Oswald investigative
team, interviewing many Cubans in New Orleans, and in 1967 he cov-
ered the Garrison-Shaw trial. In later years he served as news director
then general manager of WSMV-TV in Nashville—often cited as the
best station in the nation—before becoming a man of the cloth.
e worked together at Reilly Coffee Company during the summer
before the assassination, and | walked with him a couple or three
times. He was a fellow worker. He was sullen, low-grade anger, a loner.
Didn't really join in, certainly wasn’t going to come talk with me. The few
times I had conversations with him, I had to go to him. We'd mostly kib-
itz. [he only thing we ever talked about that related to the assassination
was he told me that he had lived in Russia; I just thought that was a lie,
that he was just trying to inflate himself. I just dismissed it.
After the summer, the next time I saw him was on television after the
assassination, right before he was gunned down, and I’m looking at him
and saying, “My God, that’s Lee.” I thought, Hes an angry enough man,
he probably did it. Like so many people, we all remember where we were
when we heard about the assassination, but it’s become part of me because
it wasn't just being stunned at the assassination, it was: “I know him, and,
yes, I believe he may very well have done that. He could have done that.”
I was in a student council meeting at college, and my immediate
thought was Camelot’ gone. Were in trouble. In my opinion, that’s exactly
what happened to our country. We got in trouble because Arthur died
271
WHERE WERE You?
and Camelot fell. We
lost innocence.” We
went immediately from
Leave It to Beaver to
Easy Rider and Apoca-
lypse Now. We went
from June Cleaver,
sweet little June, to
strident women legiti-
mately looking for their
rights—but very stri-
dently. We went from
Martin Luther King and nonviolence to H. Rap Brown and burning cities
down. We went from saluting our war veterans to spitting in their faces.
We literally went from innocence, from childhood to adolescence, and it
was an ugly adolescence. It was with a great deal of anger and attitude.
It was obviously a confluence of [many] things, but I think the level
of anger, the attitude that the country took on was far greater because we
had lost our great hero. We went from being a country that John Kennedy
called us to serve—‘“Go into the Peace Corps. Don’t ask what you can get
from the country, but what can you give to the country?” And all of a sud-
den, it was a “me” country. We lost that sense of hero worship, someone
who would lead us to serve. I’m a priest in my life, and all great religions,
every one of them, stress service. That’s what humanity is all about, we
think. John Kennedy thought that. He had some problems in his life. I
wish he would have come to me for confession for one or two of those
little sins, but he was a great man because he understood leadership and
he understood service, that people who serve come together. We didnt
come together after his death. We split wide apart.
u, ——
I was a reporter at the time, and I was part of a little three-person investiga-
tive unit that looked into these things. Everyone we talked with was a typi-
cal New Orleanian—off the wall. We interviewed a man at the time, David
Ferrie. He came in for the interview with pieces of orange carpet taped
272
Mike KETTENRING
above his eyes because
he had no hair and he
wanted to be interviewed 7 ; ; :
with eyebrows. Only in the interview with pieces of
New Orleans, I submit, orange carpet taped above his
would that happen.
David Ferrie came in for
mea coves because he had no hair and
egomaniac. I covered the He wanted to be interviewed
trial, the Clay Shaw trial.
Every day, I got up and
I said, “Today’s the day
there’s going to be a little
with eyebrows.
bit of smoke coming out of his gun. ‘There’s going to be something today.”
Never happened, but he would go before the cameras after court, every
day, and keep saying how he had all the evidence in the world to prove
that this was a conspiracy and that Clay Shaw was deeply involved in it.
Never found a single piece of evidence as a reporter about any of that. Jim
Garrison: a big, tall, imposing man physically, but he just had this ego.
He wanted to be on the world stage, and I believe with every fiber of my
being that’s why he did it.
He picked on Clay Shaw because Shaw was easy. He was a gay man
at the time when being a gay person was not widely accepted, and he felt
he could use that to his advantage. Clay Shaw was an involved person in
the New Orleanian business community and in the social and cultural
communities as well, so the movers and shakers of New Orleans all knew
Clay Shaw. If he could tie Clay Shaw to the assassination, he would be
bringing down a person who had clout in the city. Until the very end,
virtually the entire city felt that Jim Garrison had evidence to prove what
he was saying—to the very end. The jury came back right away because
there was nothing there, literally nothing there.
Carlos Marcello was on my beat at the time, so I frequently talked at
him. If he was getting off a plane, I was there. He never responded to my
questions. All I wanted at that point was to find out how deeply involved
he was in the Mafia. There was little question that he ran criminal activi-
ties, but there was no evidence that he was like the Mafia dons in New
wee
WHERE WERE You?
York. There was no evidence that he was involved in anything that was
violent, no evidence that he committed murders. That was an aspect of it
that I wanted to explore, and then, when the assassination occurred, ques-
tions arose as to whether the Mafia was behind Lee Harvey Oswald. Then
I wanted to interview him about that.
This was pretty much like the Clay Shaw trial. We found nothing to
link Carlos Marcello to the Kennedy assassination. Marcello was part of
the fabric of Louisiana. Louisiana was comfortable with criminals run-
ning their government. They were comfortable with criminals having
deep influence within the city, and I think that if you asked one hundred
people in New Orleans, “Was Carlos Marcello a criminal?” one hundred
people would tell you, “Yes, he was.” If you asked them, “Should he be
going to jail?” probably one hundred of them would say, “No.” Conspiracy
and intrigue are part of the culture of the city. Still are today, even more
so back then. Conspiracies intrigue New Orleanians in a way they dont
intrigue lots of other people in our country, and it was easy for them to
believe there was a conspiracy to kill the president.
I couldn't find anything that indicated Marcello had any problems
with the president. He may have had it, but we couldn't find anything of
that nature. I think Carlos Marcello always felt like he didn't get a fair
shake, that when he was deported it was on the flimsiest of reasons. ‘That
certainly got under his skin,
and when the Kennedy assas-
Consp iracies intrigue sination occurred and he was
New Orleanians ina being linked with it, that got
yi 5 under his skin as well. It just
Way they dont in trigu e rankled him. I think he felt it
lots of other people in our was unjust. Now maybe a Mafia
ROUTING TL cons ae person saying, “This is unjust”
n 4 is pushing the envelope just a
for them to believe there little bit, but I think that’s how
was a conspiracy to kill the hedal,
i Pretty early on, I was con-
president. vinced I would not [unravel it]
because we kept running into
Mike KETTENRING
brick walls. There wasn't
anything really substan-
tive that we could find,
and I was the rookie on
this three-person team.
‘The other two were really
seasoned, veteran report-
ers, very good report-
ers. We just didnt find
anything.
I got a call one night
from one of Carlos Mar-
cello’s lieutenants, telling
me, “Mr. Marcello has
finally agreed. He’s going
to talk with you. You got to show up at two o'clock tomorrow morning at
the parking lot at Smiley’s Restaurant on Jefferson Highway.” I worried
about that, didn’t tell my wife I was going. I slipped out, and I got there,
waited about two hours. No one showed up. Never knew whether it was a
friend pulling my leg or whether it was Marcello pulling my leg, but, no,
I never got the interview.
Marcello never told his side of the story because the world wouldn't
have believed him. He was a Mafia don. He ran a Mafia family, and who
was going to believe the Mafia don coming out and saying, “I didn't have
anything to do with this”?
I think the chances are so small that we can dismiss them. I never
say never, but the chances are so small that I would be shocked. I'd be
shocked. It’s fifty years. A conspiracy? Somebody would have talked by
now. Somebody on their deathbed would have talked about it. Someone
would have written a book to make lots of money about it. To think that
anyone who was involved in a conspiracy was going to keep his or her
mouth shut for fifty years? Boggles my imagination.
I believe the Warren Commission. I believe there was no conspir-
acy. Ihere’s nothing that we surfaced to indicate there was a conspiracy,
and other than the huge number of books that came out with conspiracy
we
WHERE WERE You?
theories in them, mainline media and television news did a good job,
because I don't think television news ever really pushed the conspiracy
theory.
President Kennedy was a man of vision. He was a man deeply steeped in
service. He founded the Peace Corps. God bless, it’s still here today. He
looked upon everyone who had rungs of the ladder to climb as someone
to help, as someone to serve. I am a priest, and my God doesn't judge any
of us on the last bad thing we do, doesn't judge us on the worst thing that
we do. He judges us on the totality of what we do. Add up all the mor-
ally good and neutral on this
side of the scale and the bad
Add up all the morally good on that side of the scale, and
John Kennedy is still a hero.
and neutral on this side of Well, rape news
the scale and the bad on that twenty-nine, thirty-nine, or
; forty-nine would I have still
side of the scale, and J ohn thought him a hero, but at
Kennedy is still a hero. sixty-nine, with the reflec-
tion of sixty-nine years, yes,
I would, and how we all
change in life. I have changed, and I no longer look at judging a person on
the narrowest part of his life but on the totality of his life. It’s what I think
is so wrong with cable news today, because that’s what we do in cable
news. We try to tear everyone down into the worst thing they've done
rather than looking with perspective at the totality of what they've done.
- Jt [joining the clergy] was a very tough decision, but Id thought
about it for years. If the Church allowed married priests, I'd have been a
priest a long time ago. My wife endorsed it. Toward the end of her life,
she knew she was dying, she told me, “Look, better God than another
woman. Have at it.”
276
Robert Groden
Turning eighteen on the day of JFK’s assassination—at home, playing
hooky from Forest Hills High School—Robert Groden was so moved
by the tragedy that he decided to devote his life to exposing what he
believed to be a government conspiracy. In the ensuing years he “liber-
ated” a copy of the Zapruder film from Time-Life, keeping it in a safe
for five years before showing it on the college circuit with comedian-
activist Dick Gregory. They brought the film to Geraldo Rivera, who
broadcast it on national television for the first time in 1975, which
Caused an uproar and helped lead to the 1978 formation of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations. He has coauthored a number of
assassination conspiracy books and worked as Oliver Stone’s chief
Dallas consultant on JFK. On most days he can be found near the grassy
knoll, discussing his theories and selling his publications and videos
to visitors.
B ack in the 60s I wasn't into politics per se, but I was fascinated by his-
tory, especially questions of history, and when this happened on my
eighteenth birthday, I gravitated to it immediately. I’ve been working on
this case since the day it happened and am still doing it now forty-nine
years later.
I admired President Kennedy. My family were all Republicans. It was
President Kennedy who made me realize that it’s not the party but the
president, the man, who really creates the office, and I admired him, espe-
cially after the Cuban Missile Crisis. I was absolutely shocked; I took it
very personally when he was killed, so I started studying it, and a little
while later I visited his gravesite and made a promise to him, a silent
promise that I would do everything within my power for as long as it
a
WHERE WERE You?
took to try to find the truth—
because even at -the. beginning,
I didn't believe that one person
did it alone.
The president was set up; he
was brought here to Dallas. Lee
Harvey Oswald was given the
job in the Depository. He had
always shown up for work, he
had never missed a day’s work.
They knew hed be here, so it
was easy to blame him. Shots
came from the front, they came
from the rear. Ihe president was
killed; Governor Connally was
injured, whether on purpose or
by accident we don't really know. Immediately, when the president was
taken to Parkland Hospital, the witnesses there, dozens and dozens—the
ones that saw the head shot—all said that the shot came from the front.
They were unanimous about it at the time; nobody said anything differ-
ently. The throat shot and the head shot came from the front. That alone
should lead us to want to know more.
[Who did it?] I dont know the answer to that. What I do know is
the House [Select] Committee [on Assassinations] after three years said
it was the Mob. The Senate Intelligence Committee implied that it was
the covert actions branch of the CIA. A lot of people have stated that
Lyndon Johnson was involved in it. I dont know that he was—maybe
he was, maybe he wasn't—but that issue is there. I don’t think it was the
Russians. I don’t think it was the Cubans. Our issue in this case has never
been to try to find out who wanted the president dead. We know that. The
question is to find out who succeeded.
I worked for a company in New York. We did some optical work
on the [Zapruder] film for Life magazine. We blew it up from 8mm to
35mm. I obtained an extra copy—one that was supposed to be thrown
away and wasnt, and it was given to me. I worked on it myself at night, in
27.0
ROBERT GRODEN
the middle of the night,
on my own time, at my Qur issue in this case has never
own expense. I stabi-
lized the film. I took the been to try to find out who
original film, which was wanted the president dead. We
very shaky, and I stabi-
lized on the president’s
head and just shot one find out who succeeded.
frame at atime until the —
know that. The question is to
film was over. When I
ran it back, it was obvious that the president had been shot from the
front. You see the bullet enter the right temple area, and the president’s
thrown to the rear and to the left. There was no question that he was shot
from the front.
I use the word “liberated” because the Zapruder film should not have
been in private ownership from the very beginning. It is the single most
important piece of evidence in the Kennedy case. That, and the next thing
after that is the medical witnesses. I have eighty-seven medical witnesses
who said that the shot came from the front. That’s very important; I cant
throw that aside just in favor of the Zapruder film; but they’re both very
important.
They [the autopsy photographs] needed to be out there; they were
illegally classified in the first place. There was a game played between the
Kennedy family and the government to hide the autopsy photographs.
The government didn’t want anyone to see them for political reasons. The
Kennedy family didn’t want them seen for personal reasons. So they made
a deal together where the Kennedy family gave the photographs to the
government on paper.
Then the government gave it back to the Kennedy family. The Ken-
nedy family then gave it under a deed of trust to the National Archives.
These are pictures that are key evidence in the Kennedy case. There
were 152 pictures originally, now there’s only about fifteen of them left.
Ninety percent of them have disappeared from the National Archives.
That’s pretty weird. Not only are they missing, but the president’s brain
is missing, the skull fragments are missing, the microscopic slides that
a
WHERE WERE You?
were created of the wound margins, they’re missing. How can they be
gone? These were Jeft.in the National Archives for safekeeping for history.
They're all gone.
Back in 1975, I was asked to appear at a symposium in Boston called
the Politics of Conspiracy; I showed the Zapruder film there, and it was
picked up as a major news story by all the networks. I received a phone
call from Geraldo Rivera while I was testifying about this to the Rock-
efeller Commission. Would I appear on his show, Goodnight America, and
show the film of the assassination?
I immediately agreed, and we showed it. Two days later I received a
call from Washington, DC, to please bring the evidence down and show
it to the House of Representatives, and I did. To my absolute amazement,
Congressman Thomas Downing of Virginia introduced legislation just
a few days later to reopen the case. Then he called me up and asked if I
would be the staff photographic consultant to the committee. I agreed,
but my showing the film on Goodnight America was a very iffy thing. We
didn’t know if there would be any legal repercussions. As it turns out, Life
magazine, which owned the film at the time, said we couldnt show it.
Their lawyers sent a letter to ABC saying, “You can't show it,” and Ger-
aldo said, “We're showing it, or get yourself a new boy.” So we showed it.
The last official investigation was the House Assassinations Commit-
tee, and they ruled that there was a conspiracy. They knew it. Every single
one of the doctors at one time or another, usually through their whole _
careers, said that the fatal shot came from the front—all of them. But it
was [an entry wound at the throat]. Dr. Robert McClelland, he’s still alive.
He’s the one who was standing at the president’s head, and he said that
the shot came from the front. When I worked for the House Assassina-
tions Committee, I interviewed more than twenty of the doctors. I’ve got
the videotaped interviews with all of them, and every single one of them
said that the shot came from the front. Every one.
They never looked into who the front shooter was. They never tried to
find out. The question is: Who was the shooter from behind? You want to
believe it’s Oswald? Fine. I don’t believe it was Oswald. I found a witness
who testified to the Warren Commission; her name was Geraldine Reid.
She was talking to Oswald when the shots went off. She’s the one who
ROBERT GRODEN
made the change for him for the Cola-Cola machine on the second floor.
There are two basic questions: Was there a conspiracy, or wasn’t there?
Was Oswald a shooter or the shooter? Do you believe he shot the police-
man? Officer Tippit was killed with an automatic. Oswald had a revolver.
This is a controversy that’s been going on now for half a century. Peo-
ple believe what they want to believe. I believe what the evidence shows. I
worked for the House Assassinations Committee; I testified before every
investigation since the Warren Commission. I worked on the inside. I
saw what went on, and I saw what the evidence was. If you don’t want
to believe there was a conspiracy, fine—because I’m not going to change
your mind. But the evidence is there that it was a conspiracy, and the
government admits it.
The Warren Commission was a cover-up. There’s no question about
that. The reason for it, I believe, is that they were presented with the
option of admitting a conspiracy and following the evidence that Fidel
Castro was behind it. If they'd have done that, then we would be forced to
go after Castro, and that would probably lead to World War III.
The main issues in this case are not so much, “Was Clay Shaw guilty
or not guilty?” We may never know that completely. I believe he was; I
believe he took a tremendous chance by lying at the trial, saying he didn’t
work for the CIA when he did. I always have to wonder, Why did he do that
if in fact he didn't have something to hide? In any case, the main issue here
is: Was there a conspiracy? And as a side issue: Was Lee Harvey Oswald
part of that conspiracy? I don't know that we'll ever know the complete
truth, but we do know there was a conspiracy, that there was more than
one shooter. How deep does the conspiracy go, how wide? We don't know,
and thanks to the cover-ups that have gone on through the years, we may
never know. But we do know there was more than one shooter.
Some of the original broadcasts on television and radio were giving
different stories, different aspects
of this, than what came out even
later that afternoon. There was a
ieee l The Warren Commission
situation where a major network,
as a matter of fact NBC, stated WAS A cover-up.
that a man was seen running
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behind an office building across some railroad tracks. I’m from New York,
and in New York.everything is a grid, so in my mind’s eye I had pictures
of buildings right next to each other and railroad tracks running behind
it. We hadn't seen any pictures of the knoll then; we didnt know about
Dealey Plaza. Clearly we've got the depository building here, and there
are the railroad tracks. The man they were chasing was over there. That
disappeared, and it was years and years until that broadcast again. That
made me start to wonder: If the guy is up there, how is he running over
here at the same time? It didnt fit.
I can't answer for you the actual reason I’ve spent half a century doing
this. I admired President Kennedy. The world changed, America changed,
everything changed because of this particular event. I felt it was impor-
tant to do it. I just gravitated to it, and I’ve been doing it ever since. If
I would have lost interest in it, I dont know what ... I probably would
have done something else. But I really felt this was important. It gave me
a mission in life, and I feel it’s important to everybody. We have been lied
to for so many years, and it wasn't until the House Assassinations Com-
mittee that we learned the truth.
The truth was: There was more than one shooter. Whether you believe
Oswald was involved in it or not, there was more than one person firing,
and that means conspiracy. People still deny it, and it’s beyond me. More
than 70 to 80 percent of the American people have always believed that
there was more than one shooter, and they were right. Yet the majority
of the news stories that we've gotten through the years tell us a different
story against the evidence. What can I say? I need to do this.
Children, teenagers in school, aren't being taught the issues of the
assassination. [hey’re being told the original Warren Commission story:
Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone killed the president. It’s not true—but
the teachers dont seem to care, and the textbooks are inaccurate. It took
years and years for even the Encyclopedia Britannica to change it from
“Oswald the assassin” to “He was the alleged assassin.” I wrote to them,
and they said, “You're right,” and they changed it. Now it says, “alleged
assassin, which is closer to the truth. There’s not much I can say about
kids, except when they come out here in the plaza, many of them, even
little kids, are fascinated by it. They look around; they have questions.
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ROBERT GRODEN
We've had kids, eight- and ten-year-olds, that know more about this than
most adults do.
I started doing this in 1963. I never stopped; and here it is forty-nine,
nearly fifty years later, and I’m still doing it. I dont know anyone else
who's still doing it. I know there are people who are alive that care about
the case who were doing it back then too, but I have an advantage—I was
only eighteen when this happened, so I started a lot younger than most of
the other serious researchers in the case, and nearly all of them are dead.
I think there are fewer than a dozen original researchers in the world still
left alive, probably far fewer than a dozen.
Oliver [Stone] is a perfectionist. He wanted to get it done as well as he
could. Even though the scenes in the Depository were mostly in black
and white, he changed the color of the window frames to the color they
originally were back then in 1963. They’re green now, but they were sort
of like pink then.
He took care with details that nobody would notice or even care
about. He cared about the case. He put a lot into it, and of course the gov-
ernment started to attack him right away. This film was challenged, and it
was attacked in the editorial pages rather than the entertainment pages.
That’s never happened before or since. Oliver expected that the Holly-
wood community would back him and support him. ‘They didn't; they
ran for cover. He did a movie, JFK, which was a very important movie
historically. It’s made a tremendous difference in this case. It got the files
opened in the National Archives. Oliver is owed a tremendous debt of
thanks. As far as the movie goes, it is a percentage of the evidence. It starts
at the time of the assassination and a little bit before and goes through to
the finding of not guilty—not “innocent” but rather “not guilty”—of Clay
Shaw in New Orleans.
There should be another movie. There needs to be JFK 2 to tell the
rest of the story from 1968 until now, because more has happened now
than happened in the time frame covered by JFK. But what is told in
that movie is Jim Garrison's story. It’s based on my book High Treason;
it’s based on two other books, including Jim Garrison's book On the Trail
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WHERE WERE You?
of the Assassins, and it tells what happened to him, what he experienced.
That’s what the miovie is.
Oliver Stone’s take was actually Jim Garrison's take. It wasn’t his own
take; he was telling Jim Garrison’s story. The title of the movie is JFK. It
could just as well have been called The Jim Garrison Story. Garrison lived
it, he went through it, and I’m glad he got his story told before he died.
His conclusion was that Clay Shaw was involved and Oswald was set
up, and that I must agree with. The one thing Garrison couldn't prove at
the trial was motive. ‘The jury was absolutely, completely convinced there
was a conspiracy. What they were not convinced with was Clay Shaw’s
involvement because Jim couldn't show motive. He said, “The motive is
simple, Shaw is a CJA agent. He worked for the CIA.” Of course Shaw
denied it, and it was years until we found out from the director of the
CIA that Shaw had lied, that in fact he did work for the CIA at the time.
~~ aa
‘The largest sacrifice I’ve made personally in all of this is giving up my
career. Ihe second biggest is giving up my career as a motion picture opti-
cal effects expert. But the biggest challenge and the biggest sacrifice was
back eighteen years ago. My wife and I made the decision that I would
come down here to keep the issues alive because we had lost about a
dozen people in eighteen months. ‘The other side in this case was win-
ning by default. The Sixth Floor Museum, which has been lying through
the years—telling people the Warren Commission was right even though
they know better—had nobody to challenge them with any credibility. So
my wife, Kris, who sadly passed away just two years ago, and I made the
decision. She stayed up there with the kids and the grandkids. I moved
down here to keep the issues alive. This matters to me. It really matters to
everybody, but it particularly matters to me.
I would like to see the truth be known before I die. Today I’m sixty-
eight years old. What can I tell you? I don’t know about how much time
I’ve got left, but I will be doing this as long as I’m alive. Dallas has ticketed
me eighty-one times here in the plaza. They've thrown me in jail twice,
and I haven't broken any laws. Two of the judges who defended my point
of view in court were fired. Know what message is sent from that type of
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ROBERT GRODEN
thing to the rest of the
judges? If I ever have
to go back to court
again, how am I going
to get a fair trial?
The case needs
to be reopened; there
are many leads. Yes,
theyre cold, but the
possibility of follow-
ing through on some
of them is still there.
We changed history
when I released the
film in 1975—it did the impossible. It changed the course of history
in this case; it’s not over yet. There’s still a lot more to learn. I have a
new book coming out that’s called JFK: Absolute Proof, and it is that; it is
absolute proof. In it I have a lot of brand-new evidence, things that have
never come out before. I found a witness who was talking to Lee Oswald
when the shots went off. I’ve found documents within the government’s
files when I worked for the government for the House Assassinations
Committee.
There’s a lot of stuff that people haven't seen, and they need to see it.
This may be the last book I ever write. Pve done fourteen publications
already, one of them hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list.
They said it was number two, but even so it was number one—they told
me that. In any case, I don't know where this one’s going to go, but the
public needs to know; they have a right to see this evidence. It cant go on
being suppressed.
My favorite ally in all of this through the years was Congressman
Thomas Downing of Virginia, who I showed the films to back in 1975.
He realized there was a lot that needed to be answered, and he created
the House Assassinations Committee and asked me to be on the staff
himself, which I was. People like Tip O’Neill and others realized we were
right. There was a legitimate question that needed to be answered. Now
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people want to know the truth. They’ll go into the Sixth Floor Museum;
they'll just shake their heads. They'll go down to the bookstore and want
to find books on any side of the issue, and they won't find anything on our
side because it’s censorship. They wont allow any of these things to be in
there, and they should. They should let people know the truth. They want
to know the truth. They are attracted to the questioned history. About 95
to 99 percent of the people know that there is a conspiracy. In their heart
of hearts, they feel they know it. About 1 to 5 percent believe there’s an
open question about it, that maybe there was, maybe there wasnt.
Im here Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and holidays.
286
Vincent Bugliosi
In November 1963 Vincent Bugliosi was the twenty-nine-year-old pres-
ident of his class at the UCLA School of Law, due to graduate the follow-
ing spring. He was already working in the L.A. District Attorney’s Office,
where he later rose to prominence for his unparalleled conviction-
success rate (105 convictions of 106 felony jury trials), including that
of the Manson Family in 1969. His book on the Kennedy assassina-
tion, Reclaiming History, researched and written over a span of twenty
years, consists of more than two thousand pages and tackles every
theory of the case in minute detail.
was going to UCLA law school when JFK was elected. I admired him.
You know why I admired him? ‘The guy was a war hero. He talked his
father into getting some doctor to prepare a phony medical report so he
could fight in the war. A destroyer cut his PT boat in half, and for four
hours he swam to shore, taking with him one of his crewmembers. So the
fact that the guy was a war hero who didnt have to fight at all—his father
was ambassador to England—impressed me about him.
A couple years later I was trying one murder case after another down at
the L.A. District Attorney’s office. I was walking down the hall at UCLA
law school in front of the business office, and one of the secretaries called
out, “The president’s just been shot.” Because 1 happened to be president
of the class at that time, I went into all the classrooms and announced to
the students, and the professors excused everyone for the day.
The assassination of course shocked everyone, and I was just totallyshocked
like everyone else. The main emotion at the time by far was shock. However,
there was another emotion: of hope. You know, he didn't die until about half
an hour later, so many people were saying, “Maybe it’s not going to be fatal.”
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There was also the
thought that mayhe,
lost in the transmis-
<
sion, he really wasn't
shot, that someone
got it messed up.
But it was a terrible
blow to the Ameri-
can people.
My life at that
time was trying one
murder case after
another, so I hadn't
studied the assassi-
nation at all. My life seven days a week—I didn't take vacations or any-
thing—was going from one murder or robbery or rape case to another.
Up to that point, what I had heard from the conspiracy theories was that
the Warren Commission had bias, distorted the record, and fabricated
evidence. What came through to me, and I didn't have any opinion, but
one thing did bother me: | kept hearing that the Warren Commission
had sealed the records for seventy-five years, the natural inference among
people being, “Why did they seal the records unless they have something
to hide>”
I didn't get involved until 1986 when I “prosecuted” Oswald posthu-
mously in London. According to London Weekend Television, the Ameri-
can Trial Lawyer’s Association had their national convention in London
of all places in 1985; they started taking a survey, not just in London,
but they flew over here, and they went to bar groups all over the country
and asked them, “Who should oppose each other?” According to them, it
should be me. When they first asked me to do it, I said no because I had
been asked to do other things like this in artificial courtroom settings.
But they replied, “Wait. This is totally different from anything you've
ever been involved in. We know about your love affair with your yellow
pad. There’s not going to be any script. Your yellow pad’s the script. We're
going to have the real Warren Commission witnesses, no script, a regular
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VINCENT BUGLIOSI
federal judge, a regular federal jury chosen from the jury rows of the Dal-
las Federal District Court.”
I said, “This is really something.”
They promised me twenty-eight hours because, how do you put on
the Kennedy assassination in a couple hours? It ended up twenty-one
hours unscripted. It was a mock trial, but it was kind of like a docu-trial.
Time magazine said it was the closest to a real trial the accused assassin
would ever have.
Gerry Spence defended Oswald. His name came up as a criminal
defense attorney, and I came up as a prosecutor. I have to say, though,
that when they met with me they asked me, “Should we choose Spence,
Racehorse Haynes, or F. Lee Bailey?”
I told them F. Lee Bailey had a brilliant criminal mind. “Tremendous
experience, but he doesn't do his homework.” I said, “Racehorse Haynes,
that name is a misnomer. According to what I’ve heard, he puts people
to sleep.”
They said, “We just came back from Houston, and we heard the same
story.”
I said, “Spence, Pve come up against him in a debate in Wyoming,
where he’s an iconic figure. I think he’s the best one who could stand up to
me in final summation.” So that’s how it came about. Twenty-one hours,
no script, regular federal judge, federal jury—and the jury convicted
Oswald. The trial was a mock trial, but it was totally different from any
other mock trial. Where do you have a mock trial where Gerry Spence
and I work for close to half a year preparing for it? Spence will tell you
that he prepared for this trial as much as any other murder trial in his
entire career.
One of the first things I did when I was assigned to handle this case
in London is get to the bottom of the sealed-records allegation. What did
I find out? The Warren Commission didn't seal the records. The investiga-
tion was closed on September 24, 1964, and all the documents that hadn't
been incorporated into the twenty-six volumes were sent to the National
Archives for safekeeping. A cover letter by Chief Justice Warren, which I
found, told the National Archives that he wanted them to have the fullest
disclosure possible of these documents to the American people.
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So it had nothing to do with Warren and the Warren Commission.
It was an old National Archives rule that whenever documents for a fed-
eral investigation were turned over to them for safekeeping, they sealed
them for seventy-five years, believed to be the life span of an average
person. Since that time, because of the Freedom of Information Act of
1966 and the JFK Act of 1992, this seventy-five-year rule has been totally
eviscerated; 99.9 percent of those documents have been made available
to the American people. People say, “What about that one-tenth of 1
percent?” G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the House Select Committee
on Assassinations, and Judge John Tunheim, chief counsel of the Assas-
sination Records Review Board, both told me personally that their staff
was shown all 100 percent of the records. They both assured me of that,
and there’s no smoking gun in there. The smoking gun doesn't even make
any sense.
If there was any group that was bold and criminal enough to murder
the president of the United States, surely they'd have the lesser immo-
rality of removing any incriminating documents from those National
Archives, so it’s all just sublime silliness. There’s nothing in those archives
that’s going to explode the case.
When I got into the case in 1986, I found out that it was they, the
conspiracy theorists, who were guilty of the very things they accused the
Commission of—distorting evidence and so forth—and I decided to do
a book on it. Reclaiming History is a result of about a twenty-year effort.
The only conspiracy in my opinion that had any merit at all—but there
was no evidence—was the one with anti-Castro Cuban exiles. They were
under a misimpression: Kennedy clearly said, “We're not going to support
you at the Bay of Pigs. We’ll get you there, we'll train you, but were not
going to get involved.” But they said, “He’s just saying that to the pub-
lic. Obviously he’s going to
get involved.” In their mind,
Theres no smoking gun in Kennedy betrayed them at
there. The smoking gun the Bay of Pigs by not giv-
, ing them air support. So
doesnt even make Any SENSE. their brothers, their fathers,
et cetera, died. If anyone had
290
VINCENT BUGLIOSI
a motive, it was they. But there was no evidence. Then there was a recon-
ciliation between Kennedy and anti-Castro Cuban exiles at the Orange
Bowl right before the assassination. Both Jackie and the president were
there, and they presented him with the flag of their brigade. He said,
“This flag is going to raise itself once again in Cuba, and I’m going to be
with you.” That was the only theory that gave me any thought. All the
other conspiracy theories made no sense whatsoever. Likewise, Castro
didn't have anything to do with it. Castro’s not insane. He told the House
Select Committee, “You think I’m crazy? This would have been the great-
est pretext in the world for them to blow Cuba off the face of the Earth.”
The House Select Committee was in existence for about thirty
months. After the twenty-ninth month, with 250 investigators, what did
they conclude in a draft of the draft of their final report? “No conspiracy.”
That was their draft of the final report. Then two fuzzy-headed acoustics
experts from Queens College came forward at one second before mid-
night. They told the House Select Committee—which was running out
of money anyway but wanted to keep the investigation alive—that they
had listened to a police Dictabelt recording from an open microphone,
presumably by a Dallas police motorcycle and presumably in Dealey
Plaza. They didn't hear any sounds of gunshots, but they did discern what
they said were impulse sounds, four impulse sounds, one of which, they
said with a 95 percent probability because of their mathematical compu-
tations, came from the grassy knoll.
Now the HSCA already knew that three shots were fired by Oswald
from the Book Depository building, so any fourth shot, of necessity, would
have been a conspiracy. They sold the HSCA that incredible bill of goods,
but it was a hotly contested House. Four of the members of the House
Select Committee wrote strong dissents; two of them that were in favor
of it were very, very weak. The conspiracy community was levitating with
joy. What brought them crashing down to Earth was that in 1982, twelve
of the leading scientists in the country and physicists—under the auspices
of the National Research Council and headed by Norman Ramsey, a pro-
fessor at Harvard—looked at those same tapes. They also discerned these
impulse sounds, but what did they also find out? That at the identical
moment of these impulse sounds, in the background they hear Sheriff Bill
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WHERE WERE You?
Decker giving instructions to his troops, and that was proven to be one
minute after the assassination, when the presidential limousine was long
gone down the Stemmons Freeway on the way to Parkland Hospital. So
those impulse sounds could not have been any fourth shot.
By the way, to show you how silly the conspiracy theory is, their main
idea is that the CIA hired a Mob hit man to fire from the grassy knoll.
Whoever fired that shot, supposedly from the grassy knoll, the head shot’s
only forty yards away and the guy is so bad a shot, not only cant he hit
Kennedy, he can't even hit the presidential limousine. It’s just crazy. I have
to say this: The House Select Committee did a good job, but they really
stained and blemished their record tremendously. It was very unprofes-
sional what they did, to seize what these two acoustics experts had. That’s
all they had to go on, the acoustics evidence. Twenty-nine months of
investigation showed no conspiracy.
Oliver Stone shouldn't even be invited to the table of discussion on
this. PI give this to Oliver—you know, I’ve got to be fair to him—he did
have the correct date. He had the correct city. He had the correct victim.
But other than that, his movie, and I’m choosing my words carefully, was
almost one continuous lie, and he had the audacity to fictionalize history.
Fine, but you call it fiction. He didn't. He bought the fringe conspiracy
theories, all of their theories, even though it was rebutted by everything
else. However, there are certain areas where we know flat-out that he
knew he was inventing evidence. It’s the consensus of everyone except
Oliver Stone that Jim Garrison framed poor Clay Shaw. How did he do
it? He literally had his staff bribe, intimidate, and hypnotize witnesses.
The jury came back—they had a cup of coffee of course—they came back
in about twenty minutes. It was ridiculous. He’s [Garrison's] a disgrace.
Then Stone came along and resurrected him from his legal grave. There’s
no merit whatsoever to the prosecution of Shaw. Totally innocent.
Billions of words have been written about the Kennedy assassination,
more than any other single one-day event in world history. But to sum-
marize it, I learned as a prosecutor, you don't have to be a pro; it’s just
common sense: If a person is innocent of a crime, chances are there’s
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VINCENT BUGLIOSI
not going to be any evidence at all pointing toward his guilt. But now
and then, because of the nature of life, the unaccountability of things,
there may be one piece of evidence and in unusual, rare situations, two,
three pieces of evidence that point toward guilt even though the person
is innocent. But in the Kennedy case, all the evidence, without exception,
points toward Oswald’s guilt. In Reclaiming History, I set forward fifty-
three separate pieces of evidence that point toward his guilt, and under
those circumstances it wouldn't even be humanly possible for him to be
innocent—not in the world in which we live, the world where there’s
going to be a dawn tomorrow. Not in that world. Only in a fantasy world
can you have fifty-three pieces of evidence pointing toward guilt and still
be innocent.
Let me quickly give just a couple pieces of evidence. The murder
weapon, a 6.5mm Mannlicher-Carcano, was proven by firearms tests to
be the murder weapon. So, one, Oswald owned and possessed the mur-
der weapon. Iwo, he was the only employee at the Book Depository
Building who fled the Book Depository Building after the shooting in
Dealey Plaza. Forty-five minutes later he shoots and kills Officer J. D.
Tippit of the Dallas police department, who stopped him on the street
for questioning.
Half an hour later at the Texas Theatre, he resists arrest by pulling
a gun on the arresting officer. During his interrogation over a three-day
period, he told one provable lie after another, all of which showed a con-
sciousness of guilt. It’s not even possible for this man to be innocent. I
have no doubt that he’s guilty. I’m satisfied beyond all reasonable doubt
that he acted alone.
People say, “Ruby silenced Oswald for the Mob.” Doesn't that presup-
pose that Oswald killed JFK for the Mob? If he hadn't, there'd be no rea-
son to silence him. Jack Ruby had all types of problems. He had organic
brain damage. He'd
be the last person
to use as a hit man. ‘ r i
re All the evidence, without exception,
las Police Depart- points toward Oswald; guilt.
ment. Hed hang TE SE SS
WHERE WERE You?
out at police headquarters. He loved them. He was a big blabbermouth.
Again, you don't use a blabbermouth as a hit man, constantly going to the
Dallas Police Department to talk about things he had heard at his girly
club, the Carousel Club. Someone who knew Jack really well, Jack Revell,
who was a detective for the Dallas Police Department, told the House
Select Committee, “Jack Ruby was a buffoon.” He said, “If Jack Ruby
killed Oswald for the Mob, and if he was a member of the Mob, then the
Mafia needs someone new to be their recruiting officer.”
Why did he do it? Jack Ruby loved JFK. When I say, “loved JFK,”
his psychiatrist also said it, and he wasn't talking about in a loose lay-
man’s sense but talking about how he literally loved the man. He cried
over the assassination weekend, cried constantly over the death of JFK.
He thought JFK was the greatest man who was ever born. His sister Eva
was there at the time. She moved to L.A., and I used to talk to her from
time to time, and this is what she said: “Jack cried harder when Kennedy
died than when Ma and Pa died.” He hated Oswald. When he shot him,
he said, “Someone had to kill that SOB, and you guys couldn't do it.” He
loved Kennedy. That’s one of the reasons he did what he did.
The second reason: Jack fantasized about being a hero. He used to tell
people, “I can dream about the Dallas Police Department being overcome
by some terrible bad men, and then I come and I save them.” If you talk
to people who knew him at the Carousel Club, you know what they say?
“Jack wanted to become a hero.” The prosecutor in his trial told me, “Jack
wanted to become a hero.” Several members of the jury said, “Jack wanted
to become a hero.” He asked his lawyer, “Where’s the author that’s going
to write a big book and a movie about me?” He thought he was going to
get a slap on the wrist because he killed the guy who killed the president,
and there was all this animus against Oswald. He thought that within a
short period of time, he'd be back at the Carousel Club greeting people at
the door from all over the world, wanting to shake the hand of the man
who killed the man who killed the president. But he was a man of rather
low intellect, with a violent temper. He was constantly getting in fights
at the Carousel Club. He was not a hit man for the Mob. No evidence.
The FBI checked it out. No evidence that he was ever associated with the
Mob.
VINCENT BUGLIOSI
As far as the people are concerned, there’s been a decreasing trust by
the American people in their government down through the years, and
it all started with the Kennedy assassination and the conspiracy commu-
nity’s allegation that the US government was concealing the truth from
the American people. At the time of the assassination, polls showed that
about 76 percent of the American people had trust in their government
to do the right thing for them. Ihat number dropped precipitously after
the Kennedy assassination, all the way down to 19 percent in the early
90s. Today I think I’ve heard it’s somewhere around 40 percent, so I don’t
think there’s any question that it hurt the American psyche. When you
have the trust and the confidence of the American people in their govern-
ment undermined to the extent that they actually believe, in effect, that
their government was an accessory after the fact to Kennedy’s murder—in
the sense that the government was concealing the truth to protect those
involved—that has to have a deleterious effect on the nation’s psyche that
has manifested itself through the years, and that distrust was fortified by
subsequent events like Watergate and Iran-Contra. But it all started with
the Kennedy assassination.
Now as far as what happened having an effect on history, it’s my
belief—no one knows—but we may never have had the Vietnam War,
whose cataclysmic consequences resonate to this very day. There’s a sub-
stantial division of opinion among Kennedy’s advisors and close associ-
ates as to whether he would have gone to war. Whether he would have
gone to war is a question whose answer is lost to history. However, let
me give you one strong piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to the
direction that he would not have gone to war. On October 11, 1963, about
a month and a half before the assassination, he issued National Security
Action Memorandum number 263, which ordered one thousand Ameri-
can troops in Vietnam home from the 16,500 who were already there, and
he wanted them home by the end of the year. Now that may not be dis-
positive or conclusive, but it certainly shows he was not eager at that point
to escalate our involvement in Vietnam. Of course he said contradictory
things, but he actually believed at that time, as most American leaders
did, in the Domino ‘Theory. They take South Vietnam, and next thing you
know they're at our door ninety miles away in Cuba. It wasn’t real, but
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WHERE WERE You?
it was perceived to be real at that point. But he said many contradictory
things. He talked-to people like Sorensen and Schlesinger. They actually
heard him say, “Withdrawal is the viable alternative here.”
i —_aie
There are two realities in the Kennedy case. One is that at its core this is a
very simple case—not just simple, it’s a very simple case at its core. In fact,
within hours of the shooting in Dealey Plaza, Dallas law enforcement, I’m
talking about the Dallas PD, Dallas Sheriff’s Office, local office of the FBI,
they already knew—not believed—they already knew that Oswald had
killed Kennedy. Within about a day or so thereafter, when they learned
who he was and his background, they were convinced he acted alone. That
reality exists at this very moment. This is a very simple case.
However, there’s another reality here: Because of the unceasing and
fanatical obsession of thousands of Warren Commission critics and con-
spiracy theorists, not just in America but around the world, who put this
case under a high-powered microscope and examined every conceivable
piece of evidence from every angle, and split hairs and then proceeded to
split the split hairs, and made hundreds upon hundreds of allegations, and
along the way deliberately distorted the official record, this simple case
has been transformed into its present form. What’s that form? It’s now
the most complex murder case by far in world history.
One example: In my book I found it necessary in one end note—I’m
not talking about the main text now, one end note in manuscript form—
to allocate about 120 pages on acoustics, with fifty footnotes. It’s gotten
totally out of hand. Right now, there’re many, many people around the
country who are looking at some document from the archives or elsewhere
for some inconsistency, some discrepancy, some contradiction, something
that doesn’t add up, which in their mind equates to conspiracy. When you
have thousands of people examining every word and comma of thousands
of documents, otherwise intelligent people—now I’m choosing my words
carefully again—when it comes to the Kennedy case, they’re certifiably
psychotic, and Pll say that publicly. When you have otherwise intelligent
people looking at every word and comma, they can create a lot of mis-
chief. You follow? And that’s precisely what they've done.
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VINCENT BUGLIOSI
Now there are many reasons people believe in a conspiracy, but PI
tell you the main one is the conspiracy theorists. On September 24, 1964,
the Warren Commission issued their report. The conspiracy theorists had
already been screaming conspiracy since the final bullet had come to rest.
So they had about ten months of trying to poison the American public
before the report was even issued. But still, when the Warren Commis-
sion came out with this report, only 31.6 percent of the American people
rejected the findings of the Warren Commission. The majority accepted
it. But over the years, and through their constant torrent and blizzard of
books, radio and TV talk shows, movies, and college lectures, the shrill
voice of the conspiracy theorists finally penetrated the consciousness of
the American people and convinced the majority of Americans.
Right now the figure is around 75 percent that Oswald was either a
member of a high-level conspiracy or just some patsy who was framed by
an elaborate group of conspirators ranging from anti-Castro Cuban exiles
to organized crime. I think it was Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister
to the Third Reich, who said, “If you push something at someone long
enough, eventually they're going to start buying it, particularly if they're
not exposed to any contrary view.”
An example of how dominant the conspiracy theorists have been is
that of the thousand books written on the assassination, I would wager
that the percent of pro-conspiracy books is around 95 percent.-That’s all
they've heard basically, and it’s eventually taken its toll. The thing that
occupies the American mind more than anything else is not even Oswald’s
guilt. But if he is guilty, was there a conspiracy behind him? I can knock
that out in about two minutes. That is what you hear people talking about:
Conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy—he was part of a conspiracy.
I can summarize that in three points:
(1) The Warren Commission, the FBI, and the House Select Com-
mittee all conducted extensive examinations of the evidence in this case
and concluded that there was no credible—let me italicize the word
“credible’—no credible evidence that any of these groups like the CIA or
Mob was behind the assassination.
One little footnote to this: In London, Spence was raising all these
conspiracy theories and all that, and I told the jury, “Folks, let me tell
297
WHERE WERE You?
you something. [ll stipu-
late that three people can
keep a secret, but only if
two are dead, and here
were talking about fifty
years later not one credible
word or syllable has leaked
out. Why? Because there’s
nothing to leak out.”
(2) There’s no evidence
that Oswald ever had any
association of any kind
whatsoever with any of
these groups believed to be
behind the assassination—
by meeting with them in person, letter, phone, carrier pigeon, it didn’t
make any difference. No evidence that he had any association with any
of these groups. The FBI covered just about every breath Oswald ever
breathed between the moment he came back from the Soviet Union on
June 13, 1962, up until the day of the assassination, twenty-five thousand
interviews. They found no evidence of any connection between Oswald
and any of these groups.
(3) Let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that one of these
groups—and this is a prodigiously unlikely assumption—decided to kill
the president of the United States. Oswald would have been one of the
last people on the face of this Earth they would have gotten. Why? He's
not an expert shot; he’s a good shot, not an expert shot. He had a twelve-
dollar mail-order rifle. He’s notoriously unreliable, extremely unstable.
Here is a guy who defects to the Soviet Union, pre-Gorbachev. Even
today, who in the world defects to the Soviet Union? He gets over there.
He desperately tries to become a Soviet citizen. They turn him down.
What does he do? He slashes his wrists, tries to commit suicide. Just the
type of guy—I’m being sarcastic now—just the type of guy the CIA or
Mob would want to rely upon to commit the biggest murder in American
history.
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VINCENT BuGLIosI1
Let’s take it a step further. Let’s assume
that one of these groups for whatever reason ffy all sublime
wanted to kill the president. They decided they -
want Oswald to do it. Let’s see where that silliness.
takes us. PI tell you where it takes us. There
are two scenarios. Ill give you the least likely
first: After he shoots Kennedy and leaves the building, the least likely
thing that would have happened, there would have been a car waiting for
him to drive him down to Mexico, Guatemala, or what have you. ‘They,
the conspirators, certainly wouldn't want their hit man to be apprehended
and interrogated by the police. That’s the least-likely scenario. The most-
likely scenario by far is that, if the CIA or Mob got Oswald to kill Ken-
nedy for them, there would have been a car waiting for him to drive him
to his death. You know that would have happened, and yet we know that
Oswald’s in the street with thirteen dollars in his pocket trying to flag
down buses and cabs. ‘That fact alone tells any rational person that he
acted alone.
Even the presidential motorcade, which took the president right
beneath the sixth-floor window of Oswald, wasnt determined until
November 18, four days before the assassination. It wasnt made public
until November 19, three days before the assassination. Does any rational
person believe that a conspiracy to murder the most powerful man on
Earth, the president, would be hatched just three days before the assas-
sination? Again, it’s all sublime silliness, but it took me the equivalent
of thirteen volumes of four-hundred-word pages, not because it’s not a
simple case but because of the conspiracy theorists—and they never end.
I got sucked into the abyss. I couldn't get out. Finally my editor said,
“Vince, were going to press.” If he hadn't, I wouldn't be here now. Id
probably be up to twenty volumes.
299
(2)
a oY
3:
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John Glenn
Born and raised in Ohio, John Glenn enlisted in the Army Air Corps after
Pearl Harbor and fought in the Pacific Theater in World War Il as well
as the Korean War. Recruited by NASA, he became the first American
to orbit the Earth on February 20, 1962. Six weeks after the president’s
assassination, Glenn resigned from NASA to run for public office, even-
tually serving as US senator for his home state from 1974 to 1999. The
recipient of the Congressional Gold Medal, Distinguished Flying Cross
(five times), and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, he became the
oldest person to fly in space in 1998.
grew up at a time when the word “astronaut” hadn't been invented yet.
It was something new. If I had a hope at that time, it was that I could
learn to fly. My dad had taken me up in an old two-seater, a biplane, and
I was hooked on aviation from that time on. But we didn’t have much
money, and to take flying lessons was something in the future.
In 1946 Stalin said that Democracy and Communism couldn't live in
the same world together. The Soviets set out to do us in, and there wasn’t
any doubt about it. They were active in that. China went Communist; we
had the Korean War and later the Vietnam War. All these were parts of
the Cold War, a deadly competition. Between 1946 and the early 1950s,
a lot of people thought maybe Communism really was the wave of the
future. They [the Communists] had had a lot of success around the world.
When they wanted to take over a country, they just did it: Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Berlin Blockade. I don't think people knew
for sure what direction this whole thing was going. Ihe Communists were
helping a lot of third-world countries, trying to get their support, and
sometimes with great success.
Seg
WHERE WERE You?
Then it came time to have a space program, and lo and behold: In
1957 they sent up Sputnik, which they had in Earth orbit while we were
still trying to get ours off the launch pad without blowing up. Castro
aligned himself with them, ninety miles off our coast down here, and we
had the Cuban Missile Crisis later on. We look back now and think, That
was destined to happen, but we didn't know that then at all.
Kennedy wasnt in office very long till he decided to activate the program
to put Cuban refugees back into Cuba, which resulted in the Bay of Pigs. He
had made the decision, [but the plan] started under President Eisenhower
originally. Right after that, the Russians put up Gagarin and made an orbit
around the Earth. We thought our first person in space—Al Shepherd on
the suborbital flight—was going to be the first in space. But the Russians
beat that by about three weeks. It was against that backdrop of a dual fail-
ure that President Kennedy made a very gutsy decision, as we looked at it
then—to establish a program for Earth orbit, which we hadn't learned how
to do yet. From that we established a program to the Moon, which came
after Al Shepherd’s suborbital flight and before my orbital flight.
Kennedy knew what he was doing. I don’t think wed have someone
stand up today and say, “Were going to Mars. We have X billions, and
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JOHN GLENN
we have to do that.” We had
the background of the Cold Wọ were behind in the
War, from shortly after the end
of World War II, and we had manned space program
the Korean War and the Viet- because we were better
nam War, where we had been
Ses aie Soviets. than they were technically.
[a oedepestive objective =
It wasnt just responding to
something the Soviets had done, like the Berlin Blockade or the Wall.
This was setting a positive objective, and we kept it open for every-
body around the world to share in that. That had been the policy from
the start, and it was very important. Kennedy announcing the Moon
program startled me and a lot of other people. Some of our high gov-
ernment officials and the president, I believe, had downplayed Sputnik:
Don't worry about this beeping pineapple or grapefruit or whatever it
was going around the world. But that attitude quickly changed, and we
had to be competitive.
The problem was that in some respects we were behind in the manned
space program because we were better than they were technically. That
sounds backward, but the ICBMs built for nuclear weapons were the ones
that we had to convert and use for manned space flight. We had been able
to miniaturize nuclear weapons, but the Soviets hadn't. They still had to
build big nuclear weapons, so they had big boosters. When you convert
that over, they could practically put a house in orbit if they wanted, where
we were limited to about four thousand pounds, which is the reason the
Friendship 7 was so small. We couldn't put a bigger one up there because
we didn't have a big enough booster to do it.
We were very conscious that this was a competition with the Soviets
for big stakes. I didn’t believe the United States was second-best, but for
a long time they had been playing up this idea of the United States being
second-best technically. They were having success in space while we were
still all too often blowing up on the launch pad. We felt that and wanted
to get going as soon as we could. It was quite a shock when Gagarin made
that flight and beat us into space.
S
WHERE WERE You?
x ~e aa
The first time we got together with Bob Gilruth, director of NASA at
that time, he said, “We're all feeling our way.” We were experienced test
pilots, and seven of us were selected. He wanted us to work on the pro-
gram and help in the design and all the things we needed to do to find out
how we were going to go into space.
The program was there, Project Mercury. They had outlined and put
together the ideas for the capsule and the limitations wed have on it. Ken-
nedy had already set the path. It was some eight years later before we actually
landed on the Moon, but the path of what we had to do—to let Neil [Arm-
strong] and Buzz [Aldrin] go up there and do that—was pretty well set.
We had to do some of the first steps, though. We didn’t know how to
orbit yet for sure. We'd done a suborbital flight, but we had a lot to learn.
We put a little eye chart with different size print on it on the instrument
panel because the ophthalmologists thought my eyes might change shape
and I wouldnt be able to see. It’s still in there, as a matter of fact. It was
twenty-three inches from the bridge of my nose to that chart—I remem-
ber that figure for some reason. Then we were supposed to report feelings
of dizziness or nausea, vertigo from strange movements in the inner ear.
There was a lot we had to know, so we were working as hard as we could
to learn these things so we could go ahead with the lunar program.
As far as doubts about participating, I didn't have any. Gilruth told
us at the first meeting, if any of us ever had doubts, just say the word. We -
were on loan from our individual military services, and we'd go back with
no questions asked. There was an escape pass if we wanted, but of course
nobody even thought of going back.
Anybody who didn't like to be in small spaces would have been elimi-
nated early on. We'd all been fighter pilots and test pilots; we were accus-
tomed to being in small, cramped spaces, but it wasn’t very big. We had
some camera cases covered up with a little cloth thing with Velcro on the
end of it that came down and then the control handle. The board switch
was over on the other side with a little plunger on top. If we operated that
during launch and turned that handle inboard about forty-five degrees, it
would set off an explosive thing that detached us from the booster going
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JOHN GLENN
up and activated the escape tower that would pull this up and away from
an exploding booster if we had a problem. The “abort handle” is the name;
everybody called that the “chicken switch.”
We practiced and practiced so that everything was automatic. If we
had a particular emergency, a drop in pressure or something, we knew
exactly what to do. I did have trouble with the automatic stabilization
control system, the SCS.
I had reservations. I can't say that I was 100 percent convinced, but it was
important for the country. You just train for it and do it. Pm sure the confi-
dence of the seven of us who were in training as astronauts was higher than
the average person in this country because we'd been trained. The more you
know about something, the more confidence you have in being able to deal
with it. But there were moments when I thought, What if this thing blew up?
We'd seen some blowups. Wed watched some of the missile failures. But we
were also convinced that those problems had been solved and that this flight
was going to be OK. So we went ahead and did it, whatever risk there was.
We accepted that risk as we did during test flying in new airplanes.
< —i
I had met Kennedy at a reception here in Washington, and we had shaken
hands. I didn’t know him well. I got to know him better when I had been
selected for the orbital, the flight of Friendship 7. He asked me to brief
him on the plan for the mission. I went in to brief him, and I thought it
was going to be a short few minutes, and that would be it.
But he was really interested; he had a real curiosity about exactly what
we were going to do and how we were going do it. ] finally said, “Mr. Presi-
dent, youre asking questions that I would like to answer, but I'd like to do
it with a model and some graphics. What if I came back in ten days or two
weeks and went through this in real detail?” He said, “Absolutely.” When I
came back, he asked questions, and we spent about an hour in the Cabinet
Room at the White House.
We had things planned minute by minute for the whole flight. But
of course we got up there, and we couldnt see out there. Where we saw
out—the little window we looked out of—that’s only about fifteen inches.
We looked out, and we looked down, and we saw all nations at a glance,
-o
WHERE WERE You?
even though we werent up
as high as they go now. lt They were a steady, luminous,
was very impressive, and
we had time to think alittle & reenish glow, like fireflies on
bit about it. But it was very a summer evenin g.
busy; the whole flight was
planned very carefully.
When I looked out at the first dawn, it looked like there were mil-
lions of fireflies, not blinking on and off but turned on. They were a steady,
luminous, greenish glow, like fireflies on a summer evening. We didnt
know what they were. I reported them, and that happened each dawn. The
scientists determined that they were little water particles coming out of
the heat exchanger on the spacecraft, as they’re supposed to do, and they
were collecting and then freezing.
Scott Carpenter, on the second flight, saw the same thing. He tapped
the side of the spacecraft, and a whole shower of them went out. They'd
been collecting on there, and they were water particles, I’m sure. But why
the glowing yellow color? I don't think we know to this day why that first
light of sun coming through the atmosphere and then back out to the
spacecraft going around the Earth had that glowing, luminous color.
After the flight was successful and the spacecraft had been returned
to the Cape, Kennedy came down and they had a celebration. The hatch
was off to the side so that he and I could both stand and look into the
spacecraft I had just used. He was recalling what I had briefed him on
about a month or a month and a half before. He was a very curious person,
and I’ve thought a lot about that since. Most people who accomplish a lot
are people like that, who are really curious about everything around them.
_ When I came back from the flight, he was very curious about not only
my personal experiences but also how this was affecting the rest of the
world. Other nations were very interested in this. We talked about that
some. This was something that was very important for the country, and
he was much more confident then that we could actually accomplish the
goal of landing on the Moon.
After Al Shepherd’s successful suborbital flight, there was a parade in
Washington, DC. There were hundreds of thousands of people out that day,
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JoHN GLENN
and we began to get an idea that this was really important to the people of
this country and that they were really excited. I expected some attention,
but I didn't expect all the super attention to it. It’s hard to believe that I was
in the middle of that. I sometimes looked at myself almost in the third per-
son, as though I was looking at someone else out here. Was that really me?
It wasn't just in this country. The decision, made early on by Eisenhower
and continued by Kennedy, of making our [space] program public and open
to everybody was a very wise decision. I have a stack of newspapers that some-
one collected and sent to me from different capitals all around the world. All
the headlines are on our flight of the Friendship 7. That there would be that
kind of worldwide interest was almost unbelievable to me. They didn't do it
with the Soviet flights, but they reported our flights in a “We did this” type
presentation. The free world had done this together. That was good.
The Soviets had kept their program secret. We said wed share the results
of [our program] with everybody, and we did. We've continued that with the
International Space Station now. Fifteen other nations besides us are involved
in the space station. Ironically the Soviets—the Russians now—participate in
our space flights. It’s amazing how things change over a period of time.
Gherman Titov, who was their second orbital astronaut, came to this
country in the summer of 1962, right after my flight. We had a reception at
the Russian Embassy and were told, “They finally have accepted your dinner
309
WHERE WERE You?
invitation for this evening,”
even though it had. been “J dont know how things
turned down a couple of
days before.” So, I thought, WOrk in the Soviet Union, but
We'll put on a dinner. over here sometimes you have
I told their [the Sovi-
ets] driver to drive halfway
to Baltimore and get them off your coat and help. »
lost a little bit on the way
to work for your dinner. Take
out to the house. I sent a
couple of policemen off to get frozen peas at 7-Eleven, and Annie and I
went racing home and canvassed the neighbors for steaks. They were sup-
posed to arrive any minute, so I had two of these little round barbecue
things with charcoal in them, with fans on them, getting very hot. We were
going to put on a dinner one way or another. Just about that time, the cars
pulled up out front and Titov and the Soviets who were with him—the
ambassador and everybody else—started walking up the driveway.
One of the little posts on this barbecue thing burned off and dumped
the steaks in there. I tossed water on it, and smoke and steam were com-
ing out the carport. As Titov came up, I told him through the interpreter,
“I don't know how things work in the Soviet Union, but over here some-
times: you have to work for your dinner. Take off your coat and help.” He
did, and we had a great time. The next time I saw his wife at that time,
Tamar, she had her shoes off and was with Annie and Louise Shepherd .
grinding Planters peanuts to put on the salad. He told me later that was
the best time he had while he was in the States on that trip.
Bob Kennedy came to me about six months after my space flight and said
he and the president talked and wondered if I would be interested in running
for the Senate. He and Ethel, we had dinner out at Hickory Hill and talked
about this. I thought about it, but I turned it down. I thought my flight wasn't
far enough in the past, and I owed it to the program and everybody to plow
all my experience back into the program that would help train new people.
I turned down that opportunity, but Bob and Ethel, we became very
good friends. They invited us up to Hyannis Port a number of times. On
some of those weekends, the president was up there. That’s where we really
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JoHN GLENN
got to know him. We went sailing on their yacht, the president instructing
my teenage son on sailing and things like that. He was a warm, friendly
person. If there was a definition of charisma, he'd be that definition. He
just exuded personality. We got to be good friends.
I water-skied, and of course the president, with his back, didn't. Jackie
was a good water-skier. She and I skied together sometimes, and the press
made a big deal out of that with pictures of us out there, the two being
towed at the same time. One time I fell—I had a longer tow line than she
did. You'd cross back and forth and toss the line over the person ahead of
you. | hit her wake, which dumped me, and I went into the water. She kid-
ded me about that for a long time.
~~ —e
I was driving from Ellington Air Force Base in Houston back out to the
Johnson Space Center and heard [about President Kennedy’s assassina-
tion] on the car radio. That was a real blow. Along with the rest of the
country, I reassessed my responsibilities to the country. It was hard to
believe, like it must be some mistake—the same way it was hard to believe
when Bob Kennedy was killed. We had been campaigning with him. J
often wonder what would have happened had he been president, but we'll
never know that of course. Shortly after President Kennedy’s death is
when I decided to run for the office that he and Bobby had talked about.
It was devastating. The goals he had set, things he was doing, what he
was standing for, and where he wanted the country to go—that was hard
for the country to accept. There was a lot of excitement about the Ken-
nedys, Camelot, and the future of the country. People couldn't believe we
had changed direction, and then all at once it was cut short by this assas-
sination. It was a tremendous blow for the whole country.
i —ie
The Soyuz is over our heads right here, as we speak. Tom Stafford and Deke
Slayton, who were directly involved with the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, were
good friends, still are—or Tom is; Deke’s gone now. That was a good thing, a
first effort to get our programs together and cooperate. Early on, Kennedy had
suggested that we work together. The response from the Soviets wasn't all that
WHERE WERE You?
favorable; it wasnt completely
negative, either. I always did Finding the shuttle program
think there were hopes that
we could get together with
the Soviets and do some of
the things were doing now,
was avery poor decision.
combine programs as we're doing on the International Space Station. The more
we keep the space program and other technical programs on an international
basis, the better off we are in the long term. The advantages may vary from one
country to another temporarily, but the more you share information and the
more you work together with other people, the better off you are yourself.
Ending the shuttle program was a very poor decision. It was the most
complicated but the most capable vehicle ever built. As John F. Kennedy said,
“We are the leading space-faring nation.” For us to have to pay the Russians to
launch our people up to our space station, one we built and put up there—with
some help, of course—I dont like that at all. The biggest opportunity that fol-
lowed the Lunar Landing was the International Space Station. When I was
in the Senate, I supported that fully and debated that every year on the Senate
floor for appropriations. Wherever we travel in space, we're well advised to
do research that benefits people right here on Earth—wherever we go. The
International Space Station is the most unique laboratory ever put together.
On the shuttle in 1998, we had eighty-three research projects on that one
flight—on medicines, growth, aging, all sorts of things. Before it burned up,
Columbia had ninety research projects. To cut off our only means of getting to —
that [space] station and to take heavy equipment back and forth was wrong.
We have three different groups working on building craft that will take
people back and forth. We will resume that. But right now, if something
happens to Russia’s launch system, our human space program ends. That’s
it—until we build a new way of getting back and forth. We could have
maintained that. When President Bush made the decision to discontinue
the program, he wanted to set another goal of having a permanent pres-
ence on the Moon. But it’s expensive to do that. He didn’t want to increase
the budget, so in order to pay for it, he said, “We'll cut out the shuttle pro-
gram.” Each shuttle launched, it was estimated, costs somewhere around
four hundred million dollars. That’s a lot of money.
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JoHN GLENN
But [cutting the shuttle pro-
gram] cut out our only way of
getting back and forth to this
station, which I see as so valuable
for the future and for research
in the future. To come down
to paying sixty million, seventy
million dollars for each astro-
naut launched up to the station
and back by the Russians, that’s
wrong. If we're going to be the
space-faring nation that John F.
Kennedy envisioned, I would like
to have seen the shuttle replaced
only after we had its replacement
in hand and ready to go.
I went to see President Obama after he took office and tried to get him
to reverse that decision. He said, “Were in the midst of the recession’ —the
beginning of the recession at that time. He said he couldn't put the money
back in the budget. I’m sorry we couldn't do that. But the original decision
to do away with the shuttle was announced at NASA in 2004 with a cut-
off date of the shuttles by 2010 and ending the space station by.2015. The
[Obama] administration has extended the life of the space station out to
at least 2020, with some possibility that we're going to extend beyond that
time period. I hope we get our own means of transportation back and forth
to the space station—and get it soon. It’s important for the future.
I also hope we can instill in our young people an appreciation of what
this country is, what it stands for, and what it does. Over the past fifty or
sixty years, there’s too often a forgetting of these things that led up to why
we even have the country we have today. That has to be appreciated—it’s
not something that is written forever and will be there forever unless we
nurture it and stick with it.
I have put my things, my memorabilia, to be archived at Ohio State
University, where we have a John Glenn School of Public Affairs. We have
about six hundred students who are going to be there this fall—undergrad,
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WHERE WERE You?
master’s, and doctoral programs. If we can instill in some of these young
people a feeling about this country that isn’t just “What’s in it for me, and
how can I get better ahead?”—what’s good for the country instead of the
individual still applies today, even more than it did in Kennedy’s time,
because we have greater separations of our people in political life and
public life today than we had back then. Right now we're at a very bad
time here in Washington. We are at a time of opposition just to oppose,
not for any sane, good purpose. I’m hoping that we'll see a change in some
of that attitude with the younger generation.
The feeling of Camelot, what this country can be, the future we can
have—it doesnt come automatically. It comes because people work at it,
because you have people like President Kennedy and others who work at
this thing, have worked at it in the past and given us some of the directions
that would be better for the country in the future. The idea of Camelot is
still there. You look at a movie and you think of the objectives of a Camelot,
a perfect society. Can it develop? Will it have problems?
President Kennedy was holding out this hope that, yes, we can rekin-
dle some of that feeling and some of that responsibility in almost every
American to participate and do the things that need to be done. That’s
how this country moves ahead. It doesn’t move ahead by everybody taking
interest in just what’s good for them alone.
i —h
I was fortunate enough to make two flights, the first Earth orbit for this
country and then later on. As I age here on Earth, the effects of aging are
similar, in many ways, to what happens in space flight after youre up there
four or five days. Not a day goes by that I don't think something about
what happened in space.
When you're looking at the Earth, you're going over whole nations.
You can look down and see a whole country at a glance. It gives you a
different perspective of things. You’ve gone clear round [the Earth] and
back again every hour and a half. You're starting over again and looking
at different scenery the next time around because the Earth has turned
under you while you were up there. I wish everybody could go up there
and look down. Maybe there'd be some different international attitudes if
everybody could [go up] into space and look down.
314
Nancy Olson Livingston
Paramount Pictures signed Milwaukee native Nancy Olson in 1948, and
soon thereafter Billy Wilder cast her as Betty Schaefer in Sunset Bou-
levard, for which she earned an Academy Award nomination for Best
Supporting Actress. In 1950 she married her first husband, lyricist and
librettist Alan Jay Lerner. They divorced in 1957, three years before the
Broadway debut of Camelot, for which he wrote the book and lyrics. A year
before the assassination, Olson married music exec Alan Livingston, who
had signed Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to Capitol Records. In November
1963 she was living in Los Angeles with him and her two daughters by
Lerner. In the decades since, Olson has stayed mostly out of the spotlight,
making only a handful of appearances on television and film.
had been in a play at UCLA, a Molnar play, The Play’s the Thing. played
the lead, and the talent scout from Paramount saw it and said, “Wed
like you to come out and do a screen test.” I did it, they signed me, and I
kept going to school. I was a client of Famous Artists, and Charlie Feld-
man was the head of the agency. I was a twenty-year-old student while I
was doing some things at Paramount.
I had just finished Sunset Boulevard, and it wasn't going to be released
for at least a year and a half, but nevertheless I had worked with Billy
Wilder, and Id gotten a real taste of what the motion picture business
was all about. One day I got a call from his secretary, and she said, “Miss
Olson, Mr. Feldman would like you to come to dinner on Saturday night
at seven o'clock.” I had never met Mr. Feldman, so I thought, Is that appro-
priate? Being a Midwestern doctor's daughter, I wasn’t quite sure, so I
explained this to her, and she said, “Please. Can you please be there at
seven oclock?” So I went.
315
WHERE WERE You?
I walked in, entered
a sitting room, and. sit-
ting on a sofa at the other
side of the room, with two
little white poodles, was
Joan Crawford. She tried
to introduce herself to me,
and I said, “I know who
you are, Miss Crawford.”
I sat there, and | real-
ized this was going to be
a challenging and strange
evening. Charlie came in,
and behind him was this
tall, very thin young man.
He kind of shuffled. He
had a detached air about
him—as if he wasn't really interested in even being there—but he sat next
to me and said his name was Jack. I was kind of uncomfortable, and I said,
“Where are you from, Jack?” He said he was from Massachusetts, and |
said, “I’ve always wanted to go to Massachusetts.” Then I said, “What do
you do?” and he said, “I’m a congressman.” I said, “Are you a Democrat
by any chance?” and he said, “Yes.” I said, “Fabulous. So am I.” That’s how
things started. To me he was slightly distant. I think he was very amused
by me. I don’t think this is what he expected.
The maid said there was a phone call for Mr. Kennedy from England.
He said, “Please start your dinner, I'll be brief. I'll join you.” So we had
dinner, and Miss Crawford went on and on about how terrible men can
be. I was trying to reassure her and say, “Please don't feel that way. They
can be really quite wonderful.”
The plan was that we were going to go to the Beverly Wilshire to see
Kay Thompson and the William Brothers. I was going to drive Jack in
my car and then leave from there and go to the Palisades, where | lived
with my aunt and uncle. Joan was going to go in Charlie’s car. I said,
“Could I use a powder room, please?” They directed me down this long
316
Nancy OLson LIVINGSTON
bedroom hall, and on my way
back I’m putting on my little An arm came out of a bed-
white kid gloves, and I had my
little pearl earrings on, which
I still wear. An arm came out qand pulled me intoa very
of a bedroom door, pulled me
room door, pulled me in,
in, and pulled me into a very suffi ocating embrace.
suffocating embrace. I was
absolutely dumbfounded, out-
raged, scared, furious. I thought, Who is doing this to me? and then Good
God, its Mr. Kennedy. I reminded him that we had just met. He said noth-
ing. I retrieved my glove from the floor, and I went back to the foyer with
my heart racing.
I didnt know what to do. Should I just go? Should I stay and take
him, as planned? I stayed, he got in my car, and we drove to the Beverly
Wilshire in total silence. Nothing was said. We saw the show, and now
Miss Crawford, who lived in Brentwood, said, “You must come to my
house for a drink.” That was on the way for me, it was right off Sunset
Boulevard, and so Charlie said, “Nancy, Jack will go with you, and PH
go with Joan.” So we get back in the car, and we drive to Brentwood in
silence.
We were shoved up the stairs and woke all the children—but this is
interesting, this was when Jack and I kind of bonded, because we were
both very, very concerned about the children. We both pleaded with Joan
please to let them go back to sleep. That was interesting, that somewhere
we did identify and had the same emotion about what was going on.
We went down the stairs, and I said goodnight. I got in my car and
went home. About a month later, I answered the phone. ‘There were nick-
els clinking down in a pay phone machine, a phone from somewhere—it
turned out to be the airport, and it was Jack. He asked would I like to
go to the movies, and I said, “No.” Now, I was dying to get out of my
aunt and uncle’s house. I would’ve loved to have gone to the movies with
almost anyone. But virgins have amazing strength, and he was a formi-
dable opponent. He called again; he tried one more time, and I had to say
no again, I was busy.
7
WHERE WERE You?
The next time I saw him
was at another party at Char-
. i : , A lie Feldman’s. I had the feel-
h im, with his relationship ing that he barely tolerated
with women, that Was me, and I was eager to have a
conversation. He was a con-
There was something about
UEY strange, someth wE I gressman; he was a Democrat.
had never actually encoun- | was interested in the world;
i ; I was interested in politics. He
tered. It was like a craving 7? l
put up with it. I realized there
for chocolate—and justas was something about him,
emotionless. with his relationship with
women, that was very strange,
something I had never actu-
ally encountered. It was like a
craving for chocolate—and just as emotionless. Once he had that first
delicious taste of rich fudge, then he could go on and take care of his real
cravings. It was an incredible ambition mixed with a real and very vis-
ceral intelligence—that, combined with a sense of this country, where we
should be in the world, what I always thought was his core understanding,
that it was part of his destiny. I knew he wanted to be president of the
United States. I accused him of it by the way, and he was annoyed. I said,
“Don't fool me; I know what you're after.” He didn't like that, but because
he had been so rather aggressive with me, I felt I could have that kind of .
a conversation.
As time went on, I learned about his reputation with women. People
in Hollywood were involved. He was seeing a lot of people out here. I
think he and Charlie, the first night they invited me, they went through
the book and said, “Who’s new at Paramount?” And they said, “There’s
this little girl, Nancy Olson. Why don't we have her?” They had no idea
what they were getting into.
By 1961 Alan Lerner and I were divorced. I spent time with Oleg Cassini,
friendly time, so I spent a little time with Jack and Jackie when they were
318
Nancy OLson LIVINGSTON
married and when she was having Caroline—it was before he became
president.
After the second convention of Adlai Stevenson, Jack made a real
play to get the vice presidency spot. He lost to Kefauver. There was a brief
time, right after the convention, when suddenly people thought perhaps
Stevenson had a chance. Alan Lerner and I had dinner with Jack, with a
very small group one night, and Jack—Id never seen him like this before.
He was wounded. He felt he had strived for something, he‘ lost out on it,
and it was an opportunity that was lost. That was really devastating, that
he had lost. I reminded him, I said, “Hey, 1960, you've got a great shot at
it then.” And of course that’s what happened.
May I stop for one minute? That was for me a revealing moment, that
I'd never seen Jack be actually affected. He was always so smooth. He was
the quintessence of cool. To me that’s what he was all about.
But anyway, he won the presidency. I wrote checks, Alan Lerner and
I wanted him to win very much. He won, which I thought was absolutely
fantastic, and I found myself in Washington for the inauguration. I was
with a small group going from ballroom to ballroom, and Teddy Kennedy
joined us at one gala. Afdera Fonda, Henry Fonda's wife, was there. Joe
Alsop had given somebody in my group a key to his house and said, “Tm
with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. We're going off to our parties, but here’s the
key. Whoever gets to the house first, you know, light a fire, open a bottle
of brandy; we'll be with you as soon as we can.”
We got there first. We lit the fire, opened the brandy, and I’m pass-
ing through the front hall when all of a sudden there's a terrible rapping,
thumping on the front door. Nobody’s paying attention, so I said, “There’s
somebody at the front door.” They said, “Nancy, open it.” It was stuck, so
I yanked it open—and there was Jack, the president of the United States.
He said, “Good evening, Nancy.” I said, trembling, “Congratulations, Mr.
President.” He came in, and I thought, How did he get here? He didn't have
a hat or a coat, and there was swirling snow.
He went into the living room. Afdera Fonda was standing there, not
looking the least bit surprised. It turns out that she went to one of the
balls, got into the box where the first lady and president were seated,
whispered into Jack’s ear, “We're going to Joe's,” and that’s how he got
319
WHERE WERE You?
there. But Jackie’s back with the children at the White House. She had
just had baby John, so she was tired, and he wanted to keep going. Maybe
he had a date, I don’t know, but he showed up. He knew everybody in that
room. There was a small group from Palm Beach, his family friends. There
were people I really didn't know. There was Emmett and myself. Peter
Duchin; Peter and I see each other every four or five years, and we say,
“Will you ever forget that night?”
Jack sat by the fire in an armchair. Somebody gave him a glass of
brandy. He lit a cigar, and he sat there and started to reminisce. He was
very touched by Frost, the poet, and he had laughed about going to the
White House in the morning and seeing Eisenhower in a top hat. He
said he looked like an Irish Mick from Boston. But what he was most
interested in was what Nixon was going to do. He'd heard that he might
run for governor. Did anybody know if that was true? Imagine, the first
night of his presidency being interested in four years down the road.
He turned to me at one point, which so surprised me. He said he had
gone to the play Critic's Choice in New York to see Henry Fonda, and he
said, “Nancy, I thought of you. You should’ve played the role of the wife,
opposite Henry.” I said, “Thank you.” That was very generous, and very dear.
There was one moment that was, to me, possibly the most dramatic. It
was toward the end of everybody’s talking. He was looking in the fire, and
he was drifting in his own thoughts; he was thinking, kind of to himself,
and he said, “You know, I had a briefing with the State Department this
morning. They left a mess in Vietnam.” Vietnam? I sat there and thought,
Who cares? Where is Vietnam? “It’s in Southeast Asia, the French—” Can
you imagine the night that he is president not one day, and he’s already
worried about Vietnam? It’s on nobody’s radar. None.
~~ —ai
November 22, 1963, I wasn't feeling well. I was lying down; it was in the
morning. The phone rang, and it was my husband, Alan Livingston, from
Capitol Records. He said, “Nancy, are you watching TV?”
I said, “No, of course not.”
He said, “Turn it on; the president has been shot. I’m coming home.
We're closing the company.”
Nancy OLson LIVINGSTON
Within two seconds,
the phone rang again. It was
the school, the John Thomas
Dye School, where I had
Jenny and Liza, and they
said, “We are closing; come
and get your children.” I had
a carpool with Judy Bala-
ban, who was then married
to Tony Franciosa, and she
said, “You're not feeling well;
dont worry about it, Nancy.
I will pick up the children.”
Then we began to chat
a little bit. We were both in
absolute shock, grief, disbelief, and it hadn't been announced who shot
him or that that he was even dead yet. He was on his way to the hos-
pital, and I started ranting and raving with her and said, “Those miser-
able, conservative, Southern, right-wing—” I went on and on and on, and
she said, “Nancy, it may not be any of those people. For instance, there’s
that young man in New Orleans—he’s got three names. It’s something,
something, Osborn, Os-something.” I said, “Whoever it is, please, dear
God, get him.” We hung up. Within half an hour, they were at a theater
ambushing a young man they were after, Lee Harvey Oswald.
To this day, it gives me shockwaves to try and understand how she
knew. First of all, she’s the smartest woman I know, and she reads every-
thing, the New York Times. Both of us, we talk about what we read in
the New York Times. She said there was a page printed at that time, just
before the editorial page, that talked about news roundups from around
the country and had a picture of Lee Harvey Oswald on the street corner
in New Orleans. There was a story about him leaving the Marines, that he
had gone to Russia, and hed come back, and he lived in Dallas. So she said,
“It could be anybody. It could be someone like that.” Can you imagine?
I have a feeling about his legacy. He was president for such a short
time, a thousand days. When the Russians sent Sputnik up into the
B21
WHERE WERE You?
heavens, he very resourcefully and creatively thought of something. I saw
him on television,-and he said to me and the world, “We are going to the
Moon.” It’s like a fairy tale: We're going to go to the Moon, and dance, walk,
and look back at our world—and he actually put in motion the funding for
NASA. He meant it. It happened, and there has been an explosion of sci-
ence that has revolutionized the world ever since; it hasnt stopped. When
I think of him, I bless him for that. I’m very grateful that he was president.
We learned something from him. We learned something from that family,
the magic of that family, the beauty. It was a remarkable period to remember.
My first husband, Alan Jay Lerner, wrote Camelot. After the presi-
dent’s assassination, Jackie was interviewed by William Manchester
among others and she said, “I kept thinking about Camelot.” I thought
she of all people understood the poetry not only of Camelot but of her
life. She had a kind of literary wisdom. She was extremely well read. She
had an appreciation of things that were beautiful. She was an interesting
person. She had the instincts of a great movie star.
Rose Styron
In 1963 Rose Styron was a thirty-five-year-old poet, journalist, and
human rights activist married to Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Wil-
liam Styron. She had first met Kennedy years earlier when he cam-
paigned on her college campus, but the president and first lady invited
the Styrons into their inner circle after the literary couple attended an
April 1962 White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners. Rose
was a founding member of Amnesty International USA and has since
served on the board of many nonprofit organizations, including Human
Rights Watch, Equality Now, and the Project on Justice. She is also an
overseer for New York University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences and a
member of the Council of Foreign Relations.
Ww I first met John Kennedy, he was running for Congress. It
wasnt his first time, but he came and talked to those of us who
were in the Wellesley center, the little political group. Of course we
thought he was incredibly attractive. He looked you directly in the eye
and seemed to be listening just to you and to be really interested in what
you were saying. The magnetism was right there in the eyes. We liked
everything he said, and we were rooting for him for reelection.
When my husband, Bill, and I went to the White House for the
Nobel Prize dinner, it was exceedingly glamorous, and I, as a poet, was
very excited to be there because he was the first president who had ever
asked a poet, Robert Frost, to be at his inauguration. I remember Frost
with his hair blowing on that very windy day, trying to read this wonder-
ful poem. Robert Frost was at the dinner, so as a poet I was particularly
impressed. On the other hand, there were all Nobel Prize winners, and
there was Linus Pauling, who had been out picketing the White House
8
WHERE WERE You?
that morning. He went back, put
on his tux, came to the White
House, and got up and danced to
the Marine Band, which I don't
think anybody had done before. All
of it was quite amazing.
We knew some of the other
people there. There were a couple
of our neighbors, like Frederick
March. Bill kept saying, “Why are
we invited? Jimmy Baldwin and I
are the only young writers.” Then
he said, “I bet I know. The son of a
bitch is after my wife.” Which was,
of course, not true at all. That was a sea change for the White House, to
have those kinds of evenings: Pablo Casals playing at the White House,
making it welcome for artists and Nobel Prize winners. That was the night
the president made that wonderful remark about how there was more tal-
ent and intellect in the room than there had been possibly since Thomas
Jefferson dined alone. He got a big cheer from all of us at dinner for that.
He made everybody incredibly comfortable, and so did Jackie. You felt
you were with a couple of friends, even if you weren't friends, because they
were so gracious and down to earth and brought you up to their level.
At the end of that evening, as we were about to leave, we were invited
back—quite to our amazement—to the private quarters. It was very
impressive being up there with Arthur Schlesinger, Pierre Salinger, and
other Kennedys, waiting for the president to come in. Bill, who had been
quite sick and was on heavy antibiotics, of course had had all the won-
derful wine and champagne that was served that evening and sat down
happily in the presidential rocking chair. When the president came in,
someone nudged Bill to get up, which he did, greeted the president, and
sat back down. The president very graciously nodded, sat on the couch
with Robert Frost, and began to talk with him.
The president was particularly interested in what Bill was writing. He
had just begun The Confessions of Nat Turner at that point, which Jimmy
324
Rose STYRON
Baldwin pushed him to write in
the first person, I think. That was "The very last time we
when Jimmy was with us, and
they had long evenings together SAW President Kenn edy 4
by the fire. Jack Kennedy really aphich was in New York,
ted to kn bout it. : i
te. he said to Bill, “Hows the
He himself may not have been a
profound reader of novels, but he book e oing a
read poetry. Jackie of course read
everything. She was really liter-
ary and cared tremendously for all the arts, but Jack did too, and he had a
very wide-ranging mind, a variety of interests, and a tremendous appre-
ciation for the need of arts support in our culture. It was music, literature,
dance, movies, all of it. He really saw the United States as a place in which
life could be enhanced by free-wheeling artists.
After we'd been to the White House, we were lucky to go out on
the presidential yacht with him from Hyannis to Martha’s Vineyard or
around Martha’s Vineyard. ‘They talked about what Bill was writing. The
very last time we saw President Kennedy, which was in New York, he said
to Bill, “How’s the book going? Where are you now?” and “Do you think
you might want to come down to Washington and give me advice on who
to talk to about what’s going on in the South, and about the racial prob-
lems we're having there, which we're really trying hard to solve?” He was
killed a week or two later, so that conversation didn't get finished.
= au
I was in the chair at the dentist's office in Woodbury, Connecticut, when I
heard the news. Ihe dentist had a little spray of water that he was putting
in my mouth. We heard on the radio that Jack Kennedy had been killed,
and the water went all the way down my throat. I went home to Bill; we
turned on the television, and I don't think we turned it off for a week. We
sat and watched, and watched, and watched, and then Bill’s father came
up from Virginia, and we watched the funeral together. We all sat and
cried, as everybody in the nation did. We were all so stunned and so griev-
ing. Bill said, “I guess we'll never see the likes of him again.” We were very
34)
WHERE WERE You?
down. We couldn't imag-
ine what would happen.
Then President Johnson
was anointed, and we still
couldnt imagine what
would happen.
The assassination of
John F. Kennedy trig-
gered a series of events that
changed the country. He
had laid the groundwork
for remarkable things. Of
course he was hemmed in
by the need for anti-Communism, for safety in the United States. But while
he was securing that, which he did admirably in the very short time he was
there, he was determined to open up America to the voices of intellectuals,
environmentalists, and people who had something to say that would make
America better. Johnson came in and tried to follow out those policies, and
Clinton came in and enhanced those policies tremendously, so I think he had
a great influence on us.
I became much closer to Jackie than I certainly had been to Jack
Kennedy. We saw each other socially, but we never talked about her life
with Jack. I saw quite a lot of her on Martha’s Vineyard and sometimes
in New York. She came up to visit us the summer after her husband
was killed, bringing Caroline and John-John with her, and stayed at our
house. We had a couple of very funny incidents that happened, but Jackie
really had to keep an eye on everything: on her husband’s legacy, on her
children, on her life to come. She had quite a difficult time deciding, in
both the family ways and her own personal life, travels, romance, and
so forth. She kept it all going in an amazing way. She was a remarkable
mother to those children. l
She remained very close to Bobby and to Teddy and, I assumed, the
sisters. I knew Teddy better than I knew any of the rest of them, and I
knew Jean—those were the two I knew the best. But Teddy was very close
to Jackie, and so was Bobby, so she had those two as anchors. But there
320
Rose STYRON
were so many Kennedys that by the time she moved to Martha’s Vineyard,
she kept them at a bit of a distance, except on Labor Day, when the entire
crew of all generations, from everywhere, came up to her beach. That was
probably the most glorious day of the year on Martha’s Vineyard, when
we were all there with her. She was fun and gracious and invited us all. It
was quite informal. Caroline and my daughter, Alexandra, became very
close friends.
The last summer before Jackie died, the end of the summer in Mar-
tha’s Vineyard, she said, “Let’s go sit on the beach.” We did, and she said,
“T really want you to write a book about all your human rights adventures.
I think it’s important to do that.”
I said, “I would like to write about all the extraordinary people [ve
met and things they said to me or they accomplished.”
She said, “But you have to put yourself into the book.”
I said, “I don't know how to do that. I don’t want to do that.”
She said, “You have to, to make it a successful book.” She gave me
some outlining stuff, and she said, “You think about this over the winter,
and we'll talk, and then we'll meet here when I come in the spring. I hope
you ll say yes.” |
I thought about it over the winter, and I decided I would do it with
her. But she died before we got to meet again, so that book was never
done. She was a really good editor and had a good eye for stories. I don’t
know how I would have done that, but I trusted her and would have loved
to have worked with her.
We were all young and private together; some of us got to meet the
rest of the impressive people in the world who were quite extraordinary,
and that produced a lucky life for me. John Kennedy ranks pretty high
among those people. I was in human rights for a long time, as well as
poetry. The Archbishop Tutus
came in from a different angle,
and the poets came in from a He once said: “When
different angle, and I admired
all the human rights activists
and survivors in other countries Cleanses.”
under tyranny that I visited on
power corrupts, poetry
37
WHERE WERE You?
missions for Amnesty. But Jack Kennedy just stayed as a pure, fine figure
for me. He once said: “When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” Ihat stuck
with me.
I’ve been fascinated by all the things I’ve read since. I knew a great
many people who were very close to him, so some of the things I knew
before, but I read things in Chris Matthews’s new book, Jack Kennedy,
which I hadn't known at all, especially about his youth and about what
was going on in his mind, the conflicts and decisions he always had to
make. It only enhanced and deepened my feeling for him as a person. I
hadn't realized, until I read this book, how much he had suffered medi-
cally and physically as a kid and as a very young man. I knew what he had
done in the war, and Profiles of Courage, and what he had done after he
was a public figure, but I hadn't known some of the private stuff. It deep-
ened my respect for him.
I’m not a myth-maker, but the results of the myth-making are quite
real in that we have a National Endowment for the Arts and the Humani-
ties, which was in his speech at Amherst when Robert Frost died. He gave
a wonderful memorial up there and talked about the importance of artists,
of writers of all kinds, and those words for the nation inspired whatever
arts and culture came after he died, which Johnson and others promoted.
In my memory, he lives both for his foreign policy and his national policy
and for his caring about the arts. We thought he was a very fine man, and
it was exciting to have him for a president. It was exciting to have him and
Jackie and Camelot, not for the glamour but for the promise. Fifty years
on, what lingers is the feeling
ae ; of hope for all of us, for artists,
It was excit ing to have him for civil rights activists, for
and Jackie and Camelot, political campaigners, which
we all were. It was a time of
n ot fe or the glamour but fe or incredible hope and promise
the pr omise. for the future; I dont think
we ever had that again.
328
Jane Fonda
The daughter of Hollywood legend Henry Fonda, who had campaigned
for JFK in 1960, Jane Fonda had appeared in just a handful of films by
1963, but with her first Golden Globe nomination as best actress, her
star was on the rise. That summer, the twenty-six-year-old actress had
gone to Paris to shoot a crime thriller with legendary French actor Alain
Delon.
knew John Kennedy because my father, Henry Fonda, had supported
him, had worked for him. When he was a senator, I would sometimes
be out on a date at the El Morocco, and he would be there with Jackie.
Then my father married an Italian, so we would spend some summers in
the south of France, and Senator Kennedy and Miss Jackie would come
over. I was just a little kid—kind of like, “Oh, my God. He’s so hand-
some.” When I got a little bit older, anything my father thought was good
was OK by me, and I knew that my father thought he was an important
person to have as president.
He impressed me with his handsomeness and with his activities.
Because I studied with Lee Strasberg and I knew some actresses—well,
put it this way: When I made K/ute and played a call girl and a would-
be actress, I had a photograph of Kennedy signed to me—my character,
“Bree’—on my refrigerator. That had meaning for me because I knew
another acting student would go to see JFK on a fairly regular basis, but
nothing was said about that in those days.
I dated Teddy Kennedy a few times, so I knew the family. I had met
Joe Kennedy when I was with Teddy Kennedy in the south of France,
when I was about sixteen. Everything I knew about Joe came from the
way Teddy reacted to his presence. Teddy and I were on the beach. It
329
WHERE WERE You?
was toward the end of the day, and
he said, “ Come, I’d love you to meet
my father.”
From the moment we stepped
into the house, Teddy became a dif-
ferent person: very timid, scared of
this man who was sitting in the living
room. He never got up; he was sitting
there, and he was a patriarch in the
total sense of the word. I knew I had
to be on my best manners, and Teddy
was on his best manners. This man
was the ruler of the clan; that was
for sure. I don’t remember charm; |
remember fear on the part of ‘Teddy.
That was what impressed me. I was
siding with Teddy, and I was just like, “OK, the sooner we can get out
of here, the better.” I don’t remember charm. I’m sure he was charming
though.
I began to pay more attention to JFK simply because I was in France
and I was with people who were very political and sophisticated and
talked a lot about Kennedy and their hopes and dreams for America.
Besides, his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver was the US ambassador, liv-
ing in Paris. Because I knew the family, I would go and see him. In fact,
he became the godfather to my daughter, Vanessa. It wasn't that I spent a
lot of time at the embassy, but Sarge was a joyous human being. It was the
opposite of Joe: He'd wrap his arms around you—just a lovely, wonderful,
charming, life-affirming human being.
We'd finished work, shooting that afternoon, and I was coming home
from the studio. I was staying at a little boutique hotel on the Left Bank,
overlooking the Seine. I walked into the lobby, and I saw the actor Keir
Dullea from David and Lisa. He was making a movie in Paris, as was I.
He was standing at the reception desk, holding a phone, and his face was
the color of a white shirt.
I said, “What is the matter?”
S32
JANE Fonpa
He looked up, and there were tears pouring down his face. He said,
“Kennedy’s been shot.”
I just—we just both stood there and cried. It was impossible to believe.
I remember then going upstairs to my room by myself and realizing I would
probably never feel totally safe again. It just seemed so impossible that this
great president, who was so adored by the world, was dead. It’s like every-
thing became unsafe and never has been, ever since, quite as sure about the
world. It shook my worldview. Simone Signoret—a very close friend of my
family, and I had become very close to her—called me up and asked me
over for dinner because she knew how I was feeling and how she was feel-
ing. She had a home in Ile Saint-Louis. I walked, and all I saw were French
faces crying. All the cars on the street stopped and pulled over to the side
while people cried.
A friend of mine here in Beverly Hills when it happened said the
same thing. They were driving home from the studio, and all the cars were
pulled over to the side of the road while people sobbed. I went to Sim-
one’s for dinner. It was Simone; her husband, Yves Montand; and their
very close friend Costa-Gavras, who subsequently directed some great
films. Everybody was just crying and talking about what an unthinkable
tragedy it was. Ihat made a big impression on me because, again, I had
been living in Paris during the Eisenhower administration, and it wasn’t
that way, hasnt been that way since. But I realized then the important
place the United States played in the world even more than I ever had and
that this man represented everything that people wanted to love about
this country—and he was gone. |
I think the Vietnam War would have ended had he not been killed,
and here’s why: Johnson, perhaps, accomplished more on the civil rights
level than JFK might have,
but Johnson didn’t end the
es = told his biographer 47] the cars on the street
oris Kearns, “It was because
I'd be seen as an unmanly stopped and pulled over to
wa e sde wele people cried.
for a number of subsequent
presidents.
O88
WHERE WERE You?
I don't think Kennedy would have had that problem, this “premature
evacuation.” ` D
He wouldnt have been scared to end the war, and I think he was
coming to know that it was wrong. Some people even feel that was why
he was killed, but I dont want to get into that because I can’t say. But I
do think he would have ended the war. I’m not 100 percent sure, but I
think he would have. That would have been very important for the United
States, all those people on both sides who died, and what it did to our
global reputation—that would have been very different.
Shortly after Kennedy was killed, I met the man who would become
my first husband. I lived in France for eight years. I was there during the
so-called Tonkin Gulf incident. I was there for the Tet Offensive ...in a
country that had already fought the Vietnamese and lost. They knew. But
we saw things on television in France that people in this country couldnt
see, the bombing of churches and schools. There were American soldiers
in Paris who were resisting the war. They had been over there; they had
fled, and they were looking for compatriots to help them with things like
doctors, dentists, clothes, and so forth. I met them. I became friends with
them, and they told me what they had experienced in Vietnam. They gave
me a book called The Village of Ben Suc by Jonathan Schell, and that’s the
book that changed my life. I read that book, and I said, “If my country
is doing this, I have to go home. I cant do this anymore. We're being
betrayed by our government.”
My life has changed so many times in some ways, but going to Hanoi—
more than three hundred Americans had gone to Hanoi before me. I was
far from the first, but I was the first big celebrity, and being an American
in a third-world country of peasants and fishermen that were winning was
mind-boggling. You had to look very carefully to understand, “What’s
going on here? What does strength mean? How can the United States,
with all our military might, not be winning this war?” It changed me, and
it made me think about things very differently. I was there all by myself.
That was the huge mistake I made. Then the picture—the most horrible
thing I could have done in my whole life. I didn’t think what I was doing.
It was the last day there; I was emotionally drained. ‘There was this little
ceremony. I tried to sing in Vietnamese, and people were laughing. I sat
Dae
JANE Fonpa
down, and then I realized all
those cameras—there were
a lot of cameras, and I wasn't
paying attention, which wasnt
always the case. I guess it was
a setup. I hadnt thought about
it, and then I begged, I said,
“Please—” because what it
looks like is not what was in
my heart or who I was. Id
been working with Ameri-
can soldiers for several years
before I ever went there. I
knew more about being in the military than most laypeople do, most civilians
do. But the image says what it says, and I will go to my grave regretting that
terrible, terrible—
I dont think any president will ever again be able to manage the
message like that. Technology has changed everything, whether it’s
WikiLeaks, whether it’s Tweets, whether it’s cell phones, whether it’s
just whistleblowers. Those didn’t exist back then, and I think that’s good.
We're not perfect, none of us; we're human, and he was human. He was
the right person at the right time with the right kind of guts, and maybe
a majority of the right instincts. Someone I mourn as much, if not more,
is Bobby. Had Bobby lived, given everything, that could have changed the
world.
We need heroes, and they were beautiful, they were wealthy, they were
sophisticated, and they were exciting. And the way he spoke. [Speech-
writer Ted] Sorensen, he was really good. ‘The speeches were poetic. I
think part of what was so exciting about them all was that you had the
sense it was natural. Whether it was the wind blowing in his hair in Hyan-
nis Port when he was at the helm of his sailboat, or he was in Washington,
or whatever, it wasn't studied; they were as close as we'll ever get to royalty.
It just was in their blood. ‘That Joe, he made it happen. “You are going to
be historic,” and they were. It was there. It wasn't premeditated or set up
or staged; no matter whether they were playing touch football in Hyannis
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WHERE WERE You?
Port or whatever they were doing, they were perfect for the time; they
were beautiful, they were smart, and they had great taste.
I’ve never félt as safe as I used to before Kennedy was killed. It made
me, me as an American, and America as a country in the world, feel less
secure. That’s one thing. The other thing: You can never really know what
it means to be an American until you've lived outside America. To have
lived in France at that time, when that president was killed, made me
understand profoundly the importance of this country—what we do, how
we behave, who our presidents are, and how important it is for whoever
we elect to be able to be respected by countries around the world.
In other words, to understand differences. Because Kennedy was
sophisticated, he understood differences. They didn't scare him the way
they scare some of the subsequent presidents. I tend to be drawn to poli-
ticians who I think can be global and not nationalistic, always rooted
in America as being a country everyone in the world wants to love and
should love, which means we have to behave in a way that deserves the
love of the world. That’s what Kennedy’s presidency taught me because |
was living outside America at that time. That was important to me, and it
continues to inform the way I vote.
poo
Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey
New Yorkers Peter Yarrow and Mary Travers and native Michiganer
Noel “Paul” Stookey, all in their mid-twenties, were on the top of the
musical world in 1963. After planting their folk flag firmly in Greenwich
Village two years earlier, their careers were rocketing: As President
Kennedy headed for Dallas, Peter, Paul, and Mary had three albums in
the top-ten charts simultaneously and remained there for the next four
months. Apart from a brief interlude in the seventies while they pursued
solo projects, the trio continued to play to sellout crowds until Mary’s
death in 2009. Peter and Paul continue to perform together.
OEL “PAUL’ STOOKEY: 1959 was my first awareness of Ken-
nedy. I was a young kid and had just moved to New York. I was not
a political creature. I had come from a very affable, Midwestern back-
ground, and I was so into meeting girls and having fun that I didn’t pay
much attention to politics. I was barely twenty-one in 1959, but I had an
apartment on the fifth floor of a Lower East Side building, and it was
really a hot, sweltering day in August. I opened the window, and I heard
a noise. I looked out the window, and, through the narrow crack on East
Fifth Street, I saw a limo go by with JFK in it, who was coming up the
Lower East Side to advocate for his candidacy for presidency. That was
my first awareness of JFK. Whoever thought, as a young kid looking out
that window, that we would have a personal interaction with him just two
and a half years later?
PETER YARROW: At the time we didn't realize that he and his
perspective would change America so dramatically. In 1959 I was at Cor-
nell. Many of the things that needed to change, that he began to change,
were ruling the roost. For one thing, success was all about how much
335
WHERE WERE You?
you got: how much stuff
you got and how much sta-
tus in the hierarchy you got.
It wasn't about success as a
human being, to be a caring,
giving participant-citizen of
democracy, who gave to their
country.
STOOKEY: It was the
size of the fins on your car.
That’s what it was about in
the late 50s.
YARROW: It wasnt
about who you were inter-
nally. If you were black, you
were a second-class citizen.
Women were very much
second-class citizens. What
he opened up by virtue of his point of view was the idea that, hey, we
really have to be together, all of us, of all genders, of all backgrounds, of
all religions. There was so much that to me, in Cornell, was oppressive
because it was so unfair. It was so inequitable, so mean-spirited, and so
hierarchical.
I was pretty much what they called then a “turkey”’—kind of like a
nerd without the cachet. A turkey was condemned to turkey-dom, and I
was until I sang in a class as an instructor. That’s when I saw that the peo-
ple, when they were singing these folk songs, these traditional songs, that
their hearts were reachable. The music was creating a sense of connec-
It was the size of the fins
on your car. Thats what it
was about in the late 50s.
tion that struck me and moved
me because these are the people
who considered me a turkey,
and all of a sudden the turkey
was leading the band. ‘They
were coming in droves. First
hundreds and then up to one
PETER YARROW AND NoEL PAUL STOOKEY
thousand people. To do what?
To do what we did right here at The accessibility of the
the Bitter End.
STOOKEY: The accessibil- music was a metaphor
ity of the music was a metaphor for the accessibility that
for the accessibility that Ken-
nedy was introducing into the Kennedy La introducing
world of politics as well. Nixon into the world of politics
and the Republicans had a cer-
tain kind of royalty connected
to the presidency. Although the
public still gave it to them, even
as well.
when the Kennedys were in “Camelot,” but from the top down, the per-
ception when Kennedy took office was, “Between my family, between
playing touch football, between showing you my humanness and my poli-
cies, I’m showing you that government is of the people, by the people.”
YARROW: Which was not the case before, in the Eisenhower years.
In the Eisenhower years, God bless him, he did say some powerful things,
but the mood of the country and the perception of each other was so
constrained with the idea of separating people into groups and into who
was in and who was out. All of a sudden, JFK united this country in a way
that I, in my life, had never seen. I had never seen people feel Were on the
same page together and We love this guy.
STOOKEY: Where people might play the power card to remain
aloof and have their agents or their people speak for them, Kennedy
didn’t. When we had just performed for the second anniversary of his
inauguration, Kennedy made a point to come to each one of us, the per-
formers, and ask a question that in a sense betrayed a certain naiveté that
he had, sweetness too.
YARROW: Our contact with the president started at a performance
at the National Guard armory, where we, in a very unlikely way, were
asked to join the likes of Yves Montand, Carol Burnett, Gene Kelly, and
a lot of stars. Here we were, barely beginning our career, but there was
somebody in the administration who said, “Weve got bring these folks
in.” We had just had our first and second hits, and one of them was “If
Boy
WHERE WERE You?
I Had a Hammer.” The other one was “Lemon Tree”—pretty, but it cer-
tainly had no sociapolitical agenda.
The audience was very receptive and warm to us, and then afterward
we went to a gathering at the vice president’s house. This was only for
the performers, the president, the vice president, and the staff who had
worked on it, including Mrs. Evelyn Lincoln, the presidential secretary.
We started out by sitting down and having dinner.
STOOKEY: Somewhere in the course of it, the idea was introduced
that each of the performers would perform what they had done onstage
at the armory again.
YARROW: Mrs. Lincoln came over to me and said, “Would you sing
for the president? The president would like you to sing. Would you consider
doing so?”
When she asked me that, I said, “We will if the president really wants
sito:
She said, “Let’s ask him.” She took me by the hand to the president,
and she said, “Ask him the question.”
I said, “Mrs. Lincoln has said you'd like us to perform for you. Is that
something you really want us to do?”
He said, “You better, because if you don't, youre going to have to
endure my singing, and you dont want to have to deal with that.” His
naturalness and his warmth were so clear.
We went upstairs, tuned up our guitars, and came down to the sunken
living room. We started to sing, and the song that galvanized everybody
was Mary singing “500 Miles,” and Mary didn’t move in time to the music.
She moved in time to her emotion. Her passion about this song, when
she was singing, she was saying with urgency, “Come home, America, to
yourself.” That’s the way David Halberstam perceived it, and he was right.
When they saw her singing like that, they went gaga.
STOOKEY: There is a vulnerability to folk music anyway, and when
Mary reached out with just one voice and these two guitars backing, it
has a way of connecting. After all the flush was gone, after everybody
had performed, the president, in his inimitable way, made sure to make
contact with each of us. He came over, and he was recalling that at the
armory, when we had begun the chords of “If I Had a Hammer,” the
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PETER YARROW AND NoEL PAUL STOOKEY
audience broke into a cheer. He asked us, “I notice that the audience
knew the song you sang. What was it?” Peter said, “If I Had a Hammer,”
and he said, “Yes, I was really surprised”—and Peter, wanting to help the
president out of any kind of awkwardness, I think, began to volunteer the
fact: “Ihat was a top-ten single.” I was thinking, What does “top-ten single”
mean to the president of the United States? It was on a 45 record, and Peter
was holding his hand up like so, trying to describe what a 45 record was,
and the president put out his hand and said, “Yes, yes, I understand. It’s
just that I don't get a chance to listen to the radio much, driving to work.”
YARROW: This was only a couple of years after we began to per-
form. The audience wasn't aware of the quality and the tone of what folk
music was asking. We weren't entertaining them per se; it was asking for
participation and unanimity of spirit and sensitivity. At a certain point,
I said to the audience that was assembled, “This is called folk music, and
it’s very common when people sing folk music that they sit down on the
floor together in a very informal way. Since I think you might get tired
standing, may I suggest that you consider doing that?”
The first one to sit on the floor was the president. He sat down. Of
course everybody else sat down, and then we sang. One of the songs was
a new song for us, “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Later I received a copy of
a Time magazine article about that gathering, and at the top Lady Bird
Johnson wrote, “We loved Puff too.” But what happened because of that
music, sitting on the floor, the humanizing effect of it, was emblematic
of what folk music was doing every time people encountered it, whether
it was from us or the many other performers of that time. It was noted
that this was the first party that Jackie had attended in its entirety rather
than leaving because it was so boring and political. Folk music dispelled
the formality.
STOOKEY: I was a Johnny-come-lately to the political process.
I inherited much of my perspective through my partners, who had an
understanding of the political process and also the communal aspect of
politics. There was no doubt in my mind that Kennedy’s motives were
very aligned with those of Martin Luther King, and perhaps during the
war years there might’ve been more of a reluctance because he had a sense
of the global community and what the concerns were vis-a-vis the Cold
339
WHERE WERE You?
War. You could say that Kennedy was a Johnny-come- lately, but it was
just a process of being able to put ideas into action through the demo-
cratic political process.
YARROW: Kennedy’s heart was there, and that’s what inspired us
all. But there’s distance between having your heart there and becoming
a leader in a political sense that challenges the political balance of power
and challenges your less-progressive support. What you're talking about
in the seat of power is the capacity to lead, but you need the groundswell
of support to validate your point of view, so you can say, “See? The people
want that.” What we had come to believe was that it was our job not to
be so much involved in electoral political efforts but to be a part of that
groundswell and march in Washington in 1963, which was subsequent to
this gathering we're talking about. We know from history that Kennedy
had to be pushed. We know that ultimately that letter from Birmingham
by Martin Luther King and the call to his brother Bobby were important.
Bobby was undergoing a metamorphosis. Bobby became a different kind
of leader at the end of his life and career.
JFK was also undergoing a metamorphosis from being a quintessen-
tial politician who had an extraordinary charisma but had to walk the
walk of what presumably he espoused, in terms of ideals so that on the
ground those changes took place to rid America of this horrific preju-
dice and hierarchy of human beings, whereby people of color weren't only
second-class citizens but could be lynched with no judicial repercussions,
who in the nation’s capital couldnt use a water fountain unless it said
For COLORED ONLY. We're talking about a time of extraordinary change,
in which JFK laid the groundwork with an ideological perspective that
inspired us all to feel that we are one and we want to reach for a better,
more equitable, more moral country, and to provide him with the grass-
roots basis for being able to act and move in that direction.
STOOKEY: Peter had flown earlier to Dallas. On the day of the assas-
sination, the bass player and Mary Travers, we had a concert there that
night, and about halfway through the trip the announcement was made of
the president’s assassination. We couldn't believe it. Our thoughts ranged
340
PETER YARROW AND NoEL PAUL STOOKEY
everywhere from Is this like an H. G. Wells War of the Worlds hoax? Was
this some kind of joke? We changed channels. Pretty soon everybody was
talking about it. Then of course came the secondary part of it, the part of
denial, which was, Okay, he was just wounded, but he’s going to be better. He's
been taken to the hospital.” Then within the hour and a half or two hours
left of the trip, the announcement was made that the president was dead.
It was so unreal, and yet, as shocked as I was, when we finally pulled into
Dallas, we went right to the hotel and canceled the concert right away.
We canceled the concert immediately and made arrangements to get
out of town. But I remember not really feeling the impact of it until about
a week later. It’s like when you lose a parent, and you get through the
funeral OK, but then a week later when you want to call them to tell them
something and they're not there—that’s what it was to realize that we had
lost one of the great presidents of our time. [hat was amazing.
YARROW: We had done a concert the preceding night in Houston,
and we were scheduled the next day to do a concert in Dallas, which
we canceled. That doesn't really matter, but for me, I’ve wiped out the
memory of the moment when I heard. All I remember was saying, “I’m
getting out of here.” I was so traumatized by it that I rented a car and
started driving. I wanted to get out of there. As I drove, I began to be able
to breathe again—because it was unthinkable. We adored JFK; we didn't
just admire him. He was more than a president, however esteemed and
honored the term “president” might be. He was somebody who gave us
hope, direction. He had a heart that we felt was embracing us all, and we
loved him; we didn't just admire him. Years later, people said, “You can't
personalize the relationship and
deify a president. You have to
look at them as guys or gals with We had done a concert the
a job.” But at the time, we didnt
have that kind of perspective.
There had been other and we were scheduled the
moments when I’ve felt that I
preceding night in Houston,
next day to do a concert in
really love somebody who is in x
office, Gene McCarthy being Dallas, which we canceled.
one of those people, and with a
341
WHERE WERE You?
lot of people to one degree or another—but not like this. JFK was in peo-
ple’s hearts, their own flesh and blood. He was America personified, and
to lose him was unthinkable. It wasn’t something that you could grasp. It
took a long time to accept that it had occurred and to process it in any way
that we could even start to grieve because, as far as I was concerned, I was
scared, I was panicked, and I wanted to get the hell out of there—and I
did. It took a long time to begin to process this loss.
STOOKEY: If I was reading this as a mystery novel and | got to the
part where Jack Ruby shot Oswald, I'd say, “You’ve solved that one; you've
solved the assassination,” because I don't think Ruby acted out of a pure
motive of revenge to avenge the death of the president. That’s the key. The
Warren Commission did what they had to do—but they did it probably
with tainted and/or limited resources. There’s more there that we don't
know about.
YARROW: For me, as much as we needed to get a handle on how
this happened, at this point whether it was the Mafia or whether it was
something completely out of the blue that was internal to the political
system—which I totally cannot imagine and won't subscribe to—what’s
important isnt unraveling that secret. The only thing that would make
that important is if we found that there was a further danger to the
United States and the things we believe in that we need to eliminate, so
for that, but not in terms of letting John Fitzgerald Kennedy rest in peace.
God bless him; he did extraordinary things for all of us in this country.
What he initiated, not just in terms of a heart space but also in terms
of the pieces he put in place, like the Peace Corps, those have changed
America in ways that still allow us to see ourselves as inherently commit-
ted to doing the right thing, to helping other people, whether it’s our own
or all over the world. That remains immutable. That’s part of our memory
of it, and that sustains. That gift is part of all Americans who somehow
inherit that legacy.
STOOKEY: The impact of Kennedy’s assassination, added to that
of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, created a wall that shut out
all the sunlight that had been coming in. To the extent that I was a pro-
gressive liberal, and aware now of the good that some political and com-
munity work could do, the obvious message to me, written on this wall
342
PETER YARROW AND NoEL PAUL STOOKEY
created by these three assassinations, was: “Don't do it. People who care
get shot at.” I didn’t feel that so much in the music, but, boy, within a year’s
time, it seemed like music stopped talking about those things we shared
as a community and started saying, “Dance. Just get out and dance. Life
is frivolous; it has no meaning, no purpose. Get out and dance. Dance,
dance, dance.” For the next ten years of our lives, with the exception of
“Abraham, Martin, and John,” I didnt hear any music that was deeply
convicting or moving.
YARROW: Life separated itself more and more frequently. To those
who, for whatever reason, say, “No matter what, we carry on,” there were a
lot of people who were exhausted by these losses; there were a lot of peo-
ple who felt consequently disaffected from the process. They felt mangled
by the sense of disappointment, as if all those people who are aspiring to
good are living in great jeopardy. “They will not survive.” This was the way
it was going to be.
There was another impulse that came to me from the years prior to
the trio, that I actually wrote about in a song at a later time, when I asked
myself, “Is what we’ve been doing really consequential, or is this all some-
thing we’ve made up? Are we accomplishing anything, and did we get
anywhere?” So I wrote these lines:
You remember when you felt each person mattered
and that we all had to care or all was lost,
but now you see believers turn to cynics,
and you wonder: Was the struggle worth the cost?
And then you see someone too young to know the difference
and the veil of isolation in their eyes,
and inside you know you've got to leave them something
or the hope for something better slowly dies.
So carry on, my sweet survivor, carry on, my lonely friend.
Don't give up the dream; don’t you let it end.
Carry on, my sweet survivor. You've carried it so long
so it may come again.
Carry on.
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WHERE WERE You?
Music stopped talking about those things we shared
as a community and started saying, “Dance. Just get
out and dance. Life is frivolous; it has no meaning,
no purpose. Get out and dance. Dance, dance, dance.”
STOOKEY: If it was at all like my personal experience, the country
went through an incredible period of denial, where for the first couple
of hours they hoped that it was not true. For the next several weeks,
they hoped that whoever did it could be punished. For the next several
months, they kept their hopes alive by reading National Enquirer or pulp
magazines that appeared next to the checkout lanes that said Kennedy
was alive, living on some island in Cuba or off Cuba or in the Bahamas
or in long-distance grainy telephoto shots where people looked like the
Invisible Man, wrapped in gauze. There was just a spiral of stupidity that
was kept alive by the press for a long time until finally it disappeared, and
what we were left with was, “Okay, where do we go from here?” It’s amaz-
ing that Richard Nixon got elected president. Is that what we came to? In
a sense, though, he was the representation: “We’ll take a firm wall, and no
one’s going to get past it, and that’s what I’m standing for, and that’s why
I’m going to be your next president.”
YARROW: The legacy of it also was that it made people not trust other
people and institutions, that now we don’t trust the government, we dont
trust the CIA to be telling us the truth. We don't trust the information we're
getting. We basically have to see every issuance of a piece of information
from the news media or from the government itself with skepticism. In a
sense, that was a loss of innocence and a coming of age, because we needed
to be more rigorous in our evaluation of the information and the ideas that
were offered by magazines and newspapers, where we now know that a lot
of that stuff was made up to sell. But it also served us in good stead when
people questioned the validity of the Vietnam War, which we now know
was based on a whole cloth of lies, where what was reported was success
and what was happening was the decimation of the Vietnamese people, of
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PETER YARROW AND NoEL PAUL STOOKEY
our own young men, to no end, because, as Robert McNamara specifically
told the president, it was not winnable. Part of the legacy made us healthily
more careful about what we bought into and believed.
STOOKEY: It’s a thin line between skepticism and cynicism.
YARROW: Some people wandered back and forth, and they felt, Z
dont know what Im doing in these vineyards, working in them. But it was
very important for us to step back and reassess that part of the mythol-
ogy of America as a fountain of wisdom and truth that didn't have to be
examined, to see if that was verifiably the case.
STOOKEY: There is a certain strength in vulnerability insofar as it
reveals a process that other people can have access to: “Oh, yeah, you're
making a mistake,” or “You’ve made a mistake—I can do that, I can learn
from your mistake.” Something as abrupt as an assassination carries with
it the realization that you can terminate a life, but you cannot stop an
ideal that is of its time.
When you live your life for an ideal, it is the ideal that is communi-
cated. A young person looks at this streaming past them, and they don't
think in terms of their own death or their own mortality, but they are
looking farther down the road at those ideas and those values worth
holding onto. Insofar as Kennedy’s legacy suggests a transparency that
has been inherited by the Obama presidency, that it suggests a youthful
345
WHERE WERE You?
ardor that is available to all
of us and a dedication toa Something as abrupt as an
broader, longer term prin- 7
ciple, that is a great gift that 4SSasstnation carries with
Kennedy left us. it the realization that you
YARROW: Framed in
my terms, I would say to
young people: Do not give cannot stop an ideal that is
up even though it seems as if of its time.
you are surrounded by enor-
can terminate a life, but you
mous challenges that are
insuperable. We have seen
extraordinary things happen in this country, many of them emerging from
the ethos and heart of the Kennedy administration and what the person
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was. We have seen extraordinary change in this
country. Where people of color walked the streets in fear and couldn't
vote, and [now] we have a black president. We have seen women come
closer and closer to equal power, position, prestige, and respect in this
land. We have seen the people rise up to stop a war that should not have
been entered into, that was unethical, that was based on false principles.
The second thing I would say is that we need to continue to believe
in and study about these events so that we can harness them in our lives,
learn about them, and learn from them, because we have to not recapitu-
late our mistakes. We have a predisposition in this country to just forget
about what we did that was wrong. I don't think, if we really had the kind
of open, heart-to-heart commonality of national examination of what we
did in Vietnam, we would have easily gone into Iraq, which was parallel
in too many ways.
If youre a young person watching this or listening to this, hang in
there, but also try and fathom what was good and what was faulted his-
torically, and realize we have had huge victories that will need to come
again in terms of the struggles of your own time. Do not be afraid to love
someone you respect. It will empower you. Do not see them simply as
functionaries. See them as an expression of your heart. Embrace them as
that, carry them in your heart, and it will empower you as you go forward.
346
Judy Collins
Starting as a Denver-based piano prodigy before discovering the guitar
and the powerful lyrics of music icons Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger,
Judy Collins in 1963 was a Grammy Award-winning twenty-four-year-
old folk singer and Greenwich Village staple, with three acclaimed
albums already under her belt and many more to come. As her career
blossomed, Collins devoted more time to social activism. These days,
in addition to touring, she is also a UNICEF representative.
he ’50s altogether were very Hollywood: very big bands, big orches-
tras, the “moon, June, spoon” music. ‘The politics were pretty rigid in
terms of you did “this and this and this’>—although in my family we didn’t
do “this and this and this” because my father was in the radio business. He
spoke openly about the Vietnam War and about McCarthy, but there was
the terrible McCarthy scare. Many people were hounded out of their jobs,
accused of being Communists, and had their careers tainted.
It was a very conservative time. I had a bob like Dorothy Collins, and
I wore a little poodle skirt when I was fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen years
old. But suddenly I found folk music, and that sort of cut through all of
that for me. When the music began to kind of bubble up, it was 1959,
and the “Folk Scare” was happening, and that cut through all these other
things that were playing on the radio. Previously you had “Wee Small
Hours of the Morning” with Frank Sinatra, “Earth Angel” and “One,
Two, Three O'clock, Four O'clock Rock,” and other songs, but then came
the folk music, and that began to carry the political changes right along.
People were beginning to wake up, because we got into Vietnam early. We
had advisors there with the French. Indochina was a problem during those
years people didn’t talk about. A lot of people didn't know about that, but
347
WHERE WERE You?
it was happening, and it was
sort of secret, sort of covert,
and there was a lot of that
going on.
There was a combination
of things going on in the run-
up to JFK. Kennedy’s father
was a patriarch who was the
ambassador to England; he
wasnt so terrific politically
and had a lot of sympathy for
Hitler. He was also a huge,
wealthy industrialist. He was
a bootlegger, a skirt chaser who had affairs with Gloria Swanson and oth-
ers. It was a very aristocratic family, but it was an aristocratic family with
very high ideals of behavior not on the dad’s part but on the kids’ part.
‘They were certainly raised with a great deal of devotion to the Constitu-
tion and devotion to human rights. I think it was already there. I've read
many indications that they were well-read. ‘They were well educated, and
they had service in mind.
Perhaps that paved the way. Perhaps they had suffered from the 1950s
in the way a lot of us had—that closed-down state where you don't tell
the secrets. You don't talk about alcoholism in your family. You don't talk
about the affairs our politicians were having, including Roosevelt. You
don’t talk about those things.
Joe Kennedy certainly had aspirations for his children of doing the
right thing and also being in power. He wanted to see his family in power
in politics. JFK didn’t do much as a senator really. He was sort of like an
LBJ when he was in Congress. He just sat through a lot of things, but he
was building his idea of what he wanted to do. Kennedy was suffering a
lot. He had a lot of pain, and that’s always a good teacher. But he was also,
I think, ready for what was happening.
I do think that’s one of those incredible historic moments where so
many things come together. They were coming together musically, cultur-
ally, and socially in every way. Ihe war was out there by the early ’60s,
348
Jupy CoLLins
and by the time Kennedy was elected it was going strong. Ihe music
was beginning to tell the story. In all the little places in Greenwich Vil-
lage, Chicago, and Los Angeles, there were singers with guitars cutting
through with lyrics that had stories, that had a point of view, and that
in many cases had a political edge. People like Woody Guthrie and Pete
Seeger were doing all kinds of things, helping to get the news out that
there was something else going on, and it was very powerful.
It was very exciting to have this new presence in politics because he was
talking about things that had value and had immediacy, and he was closer
to our age. He was a young president; he was a young man. He had a young
spirit. He had young, youthful ideas. He had ideas that could cut through, at
least what we thought was, a lot of the fog of confusion and secrecy.
He was, I thought, doing many of the right things. We were so
involved in the marches against the war in Vietnam, against the advisors,
because the first death in Vietnam actually was in 1957, perhaps earlier.
But he was taking actions, doing the right thing. The terrifying situation
with the Cuban Missile Crisis he handled brilliantly. He didn't take the
advice and just open up and fire away, which was what he was advised to
do. His advisors were hot on the button to get it done and get it over. But
he didn't do it. He put it off. He made the right decisions by being cau-
tious. Whatever happened between him and Khrushchev resulted in this
dialogue in which Khrushchev actually opened up a conversation. They'd
opened up a dialogue after the Cuban Missile Crisis passed. That was a
huge relief. People were terrified. People were expecting to be bombed
out of existence.
He was on the right side of the arts. His wife, Jackie, the first lady, was
very involved with bringing the White House into the social and cultural
milieu that was happening. She was beautiful. She was intelligent. She
spoke eloquently. It was a big showing of all the things we all believed in:
art and culture and doing the right thing, treating humanity with dignity,
and that everybody has dignity and should be respected.
I had been in the hospital in Colorado with tuberculosis for a number
of months, and they let me out. I'd already made my debut in New York,
but I was also in a divorce. I got a call from my manager saying, “They'd
like you to come to Washington to sing for the president of the United
WHERE WERE You?
States.” It was a big dinner at the Shoreham Hotel, an honorary dinner
for President Kennedy. He was being honored by B’nai Brith. The people
on that show were Josh White, the Clancy Brothers, me, Lynn Gold, Will
Holt, and Dolly Jonah. It was incredibly thrilling to sing—and there he
was, sitting there, listening to our music. I couldn't believe it.
Afterward, we all got to meet him, and the charisma was unbeliev-
able. Pd met some stars. Id met some people in Hollywood. My father
was a big star in his own pond of Denver. People were very fond of him.
He was very famous, and we as his kids got that; it rubbed off onto us a
little bit. But I never met anybody with that kind of allure and power and
sparkle, where also you felt that he was on your side and he was going to
do what was right for you. |
The civil rights movement was still in big trouble. ‘The first big bill
to pass in 1957, which LBJ pushed through, was the stepping-stone, I
suppose. It wasn’t what everybody wanted. ‘There were still problems that
had to be addressed. But I think everybody had the feeling that Kennedy
was going to get it done somehow. America of November 21, 1963, was a
place filled with optimism.
It was a cold day but not terribly cold. I got a bus to go to LaGuardia
Airport to get on a plane to go down to Washington, DC, where I was
working at a club called The Shadows. I got on the bus at about the time
of the shooting, and the driver said, “Our president has been shot.”
Then we had to drive to LaGuardia, and during that drive I was
thinking, Please, God, don’t let it be somebody who’ black. That was my first
thought, because we were already in trouble. There were some riots going
on. We had a lot of problems with the racial division and the racial ten-
sion in the country. Then, when I got to the airport, the driver said, “He’s
gone.” It wasnt very long—an hour, maybe. I continued my flight to
Washington and went to see my friends Beverly and Lee Silberstein, who
had an art gallery in Georgetown, and we sort of buttoned ourselves up
around the television set and watched this drama unfold of the murder of
Kennedy and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby in that police station.
It was unbelievable.
359
Jupy Corns
By the night of November 22,
we were crushed. It was over; we All performances all
were done. ‘This exciting, young, Í
optimistic activist in a lot of ways— shows, allj oy it seemed
imaginative, artistic, articulate, stir- qyere canceled.
ring in his speeches, eloquent in his
discussion, with an ability to move
around in the world, help us not
to be blown to pieces, and help us find our way—was gone. The feeling
was devastation really. The Shadows and ‘The Cellar Door in Washington,
DC, were where I was going to sing—in the days immediately after the
assassination, all performances, all shows, all joy it seemed were canceled.
Everything stopped. It was like the world came to an end.
We didnt know there was a communication between Khrushchev
and Kennedy, which had become quite extensive and had been initiated
by Khrushchev. We who were marching against the war in Vietnam didn't
know that Kennedy had proposed bringing one thousand troops home
at the end of 1963. We didn’t know that. Christmas was the date, and
they were coming home. We didn’t know that he'd proposed a civil rights
bill—I think we might've known that it had been on the table. We didn't
know that his nuclear disarmament agreement had been agreed between
him and Khrushchev. We didn’t know that. We didn't know those things.
We were still devastated, but we didn't even know all the seeds of what he
had been planting, what he was going to do.
Then Lyndon Johnson has become president in this bizarre scene on
Air Force One, where Bobby is feeding him the lines for the words he
has to say when he’s declared president, and he’s gathered Jackie into the
picture, who's still dressed in her bloody dress. ‘These were the images we
were seeing. He’s taking the oath of the president of the United States.
We didnt know what we know about Lyndon Johnson today. We cer-
tainly didn’t know that history in depth, and we would soon know, before
the ninety days were over and the State of the Union was given, that he
was not going to adhere to the withdrawal of troops, that he was going
to conduct a build-up of troops in Vietnam, that he was going to get
President Kennedy’s Civil Rights Bill done—which he did and which
354
WHERE WERE You?
was genius. We soon knew
that Lyndon Johnson had
his foot on the pedal along
with his generals and his
bloodhound associates in
his cabinet, that he was
going to go forward in
Vietnam with a will to
win and that he was going
to follow through with
President Kennedy’s Civil
Rights Bill.
He'd had all the expe-
rience in the Senate before, where he learned how to manipulate them in
the most extraordinary way, which few people, if any, have ever been able
to repeat in my lifetime, and he did force it through. That was the first real
breath of hope and hallelujah that came out following the assassination,
because we finally had a civil rights act passed. In that year, in 1964, the
Mississippi summer is going on, and I and a lot of people I knew were
going to Mississippi to help register voters, so it was a year of momentous
change and tremendous activism on the part of many people.
There was a whole bursting of the bubble with the death of President
Kennedy, and it was that now all our illusions were really gone. We didn't
have illusions anymore. We now had the reality of the war, which was
going on and on and on, and which most people I knew were marching
against and speaking out against. [he music was so diverse. It started to
become just bubbling with contrast. That kind of eclecticism that was
going on with Elektra Records was happening all over the country, as it
was happening all over the world. The English rock scene was coming on.
The Doors, the Beatles were coming through. We could dance to them.
We could listen to them. `
My career was solid, but I made a lot of decisions based on my own
need to grow. I was already reaching into the orchestral world to bring
myself into doing material that was new and different. When I recorded
“Pirate Jenny” from Threepenny Opera, it was extremely political and
352
Jupy Corns
extremely edgy. You had an incred-
ible amount of choice, and it was We didnt have illusions
all this bubbling talent, with this
necessity to talk about things ina Anymore.
musical form. I always loved folk
music, and | fell in love with it
because of the stories, but it had personality and integrity, and it told you,
”
“This is what’s going on in certain parts of the world with certain people.
It’s changed our country. It made possible some of the things that have
gone on since. I don't think these things disappear. I think secrets kill. I
think secrets demolish a certain central goodness in the country, and in
the world, and I think they did that. I don’t think this will be settled in
the American psyche until they find out names: exactly what happened
and by whom. Will we ever see that? I don’t know. Certainly a lot of the
information is right out there to see. There are certain things, like all the
witnesses who died: dozens of people gone, unaccountably, in suicides,
accidents, heart attacks, gunshots, and car wrecks—you name it. That in
itself is pretty unlikely.
Our hearts were broken, and our trust was broken, so our inability to
sit back and be comfortable with what was going on in the world ended
in some kind of cataclysmic way. Not to mention that now the lies begin
to come out. We knew there were things that weren't right about this, the
manipulation of the Zapruder film, and the fact that somewhere in there
something was diabolically wrong with the story. It’s still something that
preoccupies me from time to time, especially now.
Some books have come out very recently that talk about the back-
ground of these murders. One of Kennedy’s mistresses, Mary Meyer,
who was Cord Meyer’s wife, was murdered the year following Kennedy’s
death, and it tells us a lot about the manipulation of people who might be
dangerous because they knew too much, and they certainly knew things
they didn’t want us to know. All bets were off after this.
gee!
hS
Robert De Niro
In 1963 twenty-year-old New York actor Robert De Niro had just com-
pleted his first starring role, in Brian De Palma’s The Wedding Party
opposite Jill Clayburgh. He has since garnered numerous distinctions,
including two Academy Awards and the Kennedy Center Honors. Known
for collaborating with director Martin Scorsese, De Niro’s body of work
includes Bang the Drum Slowly, Casino, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather
Part Il, Goodfellas, The King of Comedy, Mean Streets, Midnight Run,
Raging Bull, Silver Linings Playbook, Taxi Driver, and Wag the Dog. He
is considered one of the best actors of his generation.
remember that everyone I was around had a good feeling about him.
I wasn't really into politics or anything, but I also had a good feel-
ing about him. They were an elegant couple, and that’s why there was
Camelot. We were all young.
Everybody was hopeful. It was
before the war was getting into
a darker place and everybody
was opposing it, so it was a good
time. It was just what it was. For
me, at that age, he was a guy who
looked like he'd be a good presi-
dent. He was charismatic, and
that’s why you noticed him. I
feel the same way about Obama.
He’s the same: young, optimis-
tic, energetic, hopeful—I feel the
Obamas are the closest to the
Kennedy legacy.
354
Rospert De Niro
One thing I remember
very Clearly was the Cuban
Missile Crisis. I was in a
classroom, going to night
school at the time. I think
I was eighteen. I was sit-
ting in a history class, of
all things, and hearing
it on the radio. I was of
the generation where you
got under your desks for
the air raid drill, which is
totally useless, but anyway the whole class was listening to him, and I was
very nervous. You felt that there could be something not good happening.
I felt certainly that the world would change. I was not that aware of exactly
how it would affect everything in the future. Obviously, it would.
At the time he was killed, I was on the subway, getting off on 42nd
and Lexington in New York. I remember as soon as I got off the subway,
people were talking, standing around, and so on. People everywhere were
just standing around, kind of stunned, and I think that’s when I knew. I
was stunned. One of the reasons I was so stunned, as we all were, is that he
was assassinated. You just never felt that that could happen. 1 remember
watching the funeral all weekend on television, black and white.
When he was assassinated, it was kind of like that was it. It’s over.
Whatever that was, it was just over. When people say, “We lost our inno-
cence,” in a way that could be true. You could say that. There was an end
to something. You didn’t know where you were going to go after that. It
makes me think of 9/11. I did whatever I had to do, but it changes every-
thing obviously.
I used to think it was what it was, and now, being a little more aware
of history and so on, I wonder if maybe there was more to it. I havent
really read the conspiracy books. I’m aware of them, been given the gist of
what they are. So I start to think, You know, maybe there was some sort of,
not necessarily a conspiracy, but something that kind of led up through all the
things that Bobby Kennedy was doing—and somehow that made it possible in
some way.
355
Sonny Jurgensen, Carl Kammerer,
and Bobby Mitchell
In a controversial decision by NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle, games
were played on the Sunday after the assassination. One of those games
pitted the Washington Redskins—featuring recent 49ers transplant Carl
Kammerer and former Cleveland Browns halfback-turned-flanker Bobby
Mitchell—against the Philadelphia Eagles, for whom North Carolina
native Christian “Sonny” Jurgensen quarterbacked, at Philadelphia’s
Franklin Field. The year after the assassination, the Eagles traded Jur-
gensen to the Redskins, for whom he played until his retirement in
1974. Kammerer retired from the NFL in 1969, going on to work in the
Office of Congressional Relations of the Department of Transportation
and later at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. For many years he
worked with both the Special Olympics and the Wounded Warrior Proj-
ect. Mitchell retired from the field in 1968 to become a pro scout for
the Redskins, at manager Vince Lombardi’s behest, eventually rising to
assistant general manager. The Pro Football Hall of Fame inducted both
Jurgensen and Mitchell in 1983.
A ITCHELL: Coming to Washington from Cleveland was a shock
to me. When we'd come to Washington to play the Redskins, we'd
see all the black people, just looked like for miles, and we said, “Boy, who-
ever comes here is going to be having it made.” I never thought it'd be me.
I was shocked when it ended up being me, but I just never thought of it
as a Southern city, Washington DC, I dont know why. But then I cant
go in the restaurant? My little kids couldn't go in the ice-cream shop. I
said, “What kind of place is this?” This is Washington; the denial was just
mind-boggling. I couldn't understand it.
356
SONNY JURGENSEN, CARL KAMMERER, AND Bossy MITCHELL
I felt a sense of that change,
though, because Bobby Kennedy and
I were pretty close—from ’62 to until
his death. In fact, I was invited to the
White House for a state dinner, and
my wife and I were wondering, How
did we get here? because the other black
couple there was Sammy Davis Jr. and
May Britt. It wasnt until much later
I figured that Bobby probably told
everyone about me. A big contrast: I
can't go into some restaurants, but I’m
at the White House.
We're standing down by the East
Room, and at that time the stairs
from the president’s upstairs apart-
ment were right there by the entrance
to the door. It’s now been moved
around to the front. People crowded
when they said, “The president’s com-
ing down the steps,” he and Jackie. I
grabbed my wife, pulled her over to
ime, and said, “lets get back here.”
We stood back against the wall, which
was facing the steps. We were about
five deep, people crowding in, and
this is the honest truth: When they
came down, and they were working
their way through the people—now
they still havent gone in the East
Room—he walked through them as
he was shaking hands and walked
straight to me. He walked over to me,
and he said, “We thank you for what A h
you do.” So I knew Bobby had said "= w m
something to him. ‘There’s no other Bobby Mitchell
307
WHERE WERE You?
way I'd get invited there. That was the only time I actually talked to him
or was around him,
JURGENSEN: Just having someone that young in the White House,
the family itself. The NFL was growing in leaps and bounds at that par-
ticular time. It didn't hurt it for them to want to attend games and for
Ethel Kennedy to sit in the box up here with Jack Kent Cook and Edward
Bennett Williams. It helped, and I know the players were aware of that.
KAMMERER: Everybody was aware of the changes going on, but
many of us were involved with the Kennedys out at their farm, watch-
ing the children competing in horse games and hanging the ribbons
around their neck at the end. My wife and I were scheduled to meet with
the president. This appointment was made through William “Fishbait”
Miller, who was the doorkeeper of the House of Representatives for, I
think, thirty-five years. He was a friend of my two roommates, Eddie and
Bobby Khayat from Mississippi, and I met him through those two guys.
‘They set up a meeting for us. Then, just as the week was progressing, the
doorkeeper called me and said the president needed some more time to
work on his speech and so we'll do it when he comes back [from Dallas].
Well, he came back, but not vertically.
Joe Mooney, the groundskeeper, was always a funny, telling-jokes
kind of guy. He saw some of us coming out, and he said, “Hey, the presi-
dent’s been shot.” We thought, Okay, he’s going to give us a punch line, and
then in tears he said: “No, he’s dead.” We all gathered around the radio
to listen to what was going on. That was the first occasion of us hearing
about the death of the president.
As far as playing or not, we pretty much would take whatever decision
was made and make the best out of
ith eeen rap until then aime
: : itself, we werent sure whether we
Even right up until the were even taking the field. The deci-
game itself, we werent — sion was made kind of late by Com-
missioner Rozelle to go ahead and
sure whether we were
do that. I respected the decision and
even taking the field. supported that, but out in the sta-
dium, here you are, you make a first
358
SONNY JURGENSEN, CARL KAMMERER, AND Bossy MITCHELL
down or you do something, which nor-
mally you'd have the crowd giving some Most of the players
sort of response and cheer or whatever, oe
but it was pretty quiet during the game. didnt want to P lay i
JURGENSEN: When we heard
about it, we were leaving practice at
Franklin Field, and there was a little truck where we get something to
drink, sitting up on the sidewalk for the students at the University of
Pennsylvania. We heard it then, and it was a shock. We had a team meet-
ing on Saturday night, where the discussion was whether they were even
going to play the schedule of NFL games the following day. Most of the
players didn’t want to play. There were other things being canceled all over
the country, and here our commissioner was saying, “We're going to go
ahead and play the full schedule.” People who were fans of the president,
they were very shaken by it. Other people who weren't, they said, “We
have to play football. Let’s just play football.” There was give-and-take
and people hollering in the meeting and everything. It actually broke into
a fight, a real battle royal—I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. It
just split the team. Nobody wanted to play the game.
We walk on the field, and there was no buzz in the crowd. The players
werent motivated. You're just going through the motions. It looked like a
bad Pro Bowl game—people just kind of trotting around out there. ‘The
Redskins won 13 to 10. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game where there
was no emotion, no passion for playing the game, and it’s a wonder a lot
of people didn't get hurt, because that’s when you have a lot of injuries,
when people arent going 100 percent.
There was give-and-take and people hollering in
the meeting and everything. It actually broke into
a fight, a real battle royal—I ve never seen any-
thing like it in my life.
359
WHERE WERE You?
KAMMERER: ‘That particular game
T fe lt it was ; est ` was quite different and quiet, reserved, down-
i played. I come from kind of an old-school
fo go on. type of mentality, and that is: Footballs
= playediin the rain and in them andke
kinds of conditions. I felt it was best to go on.
But in retrospect, after many years, it easily could’ve gone the other way,
and I would’ve respected that as well. We as a team dedicated the game
to the president and sent the game ball off to the White House following
our “major” victory.
JURGENSEN: All the teams wanted to do something, because
everybody was in shock. They wanted to do something to show that we
were involved and that we cared. They took a collection from each player.
There was a decision made to collect some money for the Tippit family.
It was just very moving not only for the football players who were in the
NFL but for the entire country. None of us had ever experienced anything
like that before.
MITCHELL: [A few weeks after the assassination] I received a call
at home. Bobby wanted me to come to downtown Washington. We had a
playground that was going to be named the John F. Kennedy Playground. It
was the groundbreaking ceremony, and his office called and said he wanted
me there. Well, Pm nervous because of all the stuff, and I didn’t want to go,
so they said, “We'll send a car for you.” I said, “No, no, I'll drive.”
But I want to get to a point that was really tough for me. When
Bobby arrived, I had moved to the back of the group. The mayor of Wash-
ington and Bobby were up front, and the mayor told him, “Bobby Mitch-
ell is there, Bobby.” That’s when he told me, “Get up here. Get up here.” I
came up there, and when we leaned over he said, “I want you to help me
with this shovel because I’m weak.” I remember leaning over with him
to pick up the dirt, and I had his arm. It felt like his arm was about that
big—tiny. He was so drained, and he was shaking, and I was shaking. PH
never forget that, what it had done to him in that very short time. We
were close right on up until the end.
KAMMERER: I was struck with Kennedy’s speeches and the way he
put things together, “A rising tide lifts all boats,” tax reform, reductions,
360
SONNY JURGENSEN, CARL KAMMERER, AND Bossy MITCHELL
Mitchell, Jurgensen, Kammerer
and all the rest of that. I’m a conservative, and so | kind of like those
points. But he touched the entire nation while he lived and profoundly
after his death. Our country has moved way out on the right and way out
on the left; there doesn’t seem to be somebody who's in the middle who
wants to sit down and discuss and negotiate and represent our people, our
voters, our country. It seems like they’re polarized, and I don't know how
were going to get back.
JURGENSEN: The assassination seems like yesterday to me. It’s still
fresh in my mind, and when you called us that you wanted to talk about
this particular period, then it really started refreshing itself. It brings it
back so much: the game itself, how the game went, people who were
involved, the decisions that were made during that time. It was an experi-
ence you certainly don't want to go through again. You see things on the
Kennedys, the different members of the family, and it all flashes back to
you immediately; you think of that family and what they’ve had to expe-
rience over the years, the tragedy they've gone through, time and time
again. It’s unbelievable, the strength and the intestinal fortitude that fam-
ily has and the things they have been able to overcome.
KAMMERER: Doesn't seem like it was fifty years ago. I pretty much
close the book on events that are of the past and try to leave them in the
361
WHERE WERE You?
past, but, as Sonny mentioned, the call to come and talk about it touched
some emotions. | still stayed involved with the Kennedy family, and later
on, in 1968, I was an official out at the University of Maryland, hanging
the ribbons on the winners of the Special Olympics. It was just a marvel-
ous thing the Kennedys did. I’m still involved in Special Olympics. One
of my roommates, Eddie Khayat, has a Special Olympics tournament in
York, Pennsylvania. I’ve been there twenty-five consecutive years.
MITCHELL: You never forget, on a yearly basis, what advancements
have been made for my people. We live with everything every day, but
when it comes to the National Football League, I’m very happy. From
where it was when I came into the league in 1958, where we were lucky
to have two blacks on a football team—when I came in it was two blacks,
now it’s two whites—but what it all boils down to is that everything has
changed. But it’s all been for the good, and everything is just so great now,
until I get upset whenever there’s something being said against the league
or whatever, because so many good things have happened to us.
362
Oliver Stone
In 1963 seventeen-year-old New Yorker Oliver Stone was attending the
Hill School, a college preparatory school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
After an Army tour in Vietnam, he graduated in 1971 from New York
University’s film school, where director Martin Scorsese was among
his teachers. Stone won his first Academy Award in 1979 for Midnight
Express. In 1988 he bought the film rights to Jim Garrison’s On the Trail
of the Assassins, and directed the controversial conspiracy thriller JFK,
which Warner Brothers released in 1991. He has won three Oscars and
four Golden Globes among many other awards.
Ke inherited Vietnam from Eisenhower. Eisenhower supported
the French war there. We paid 80 percent of the French expenses
during that war, from 1947 to 1954. After that, Eisenhower kept talk-
ing about the Domino Theory in Asia. Kennedy very much inherited a
situation that was fraught with peril. It was not only Cuba; there was
Laos, there was Vietnam. Ike was the older man. He was the one who
was trusted. It was very hard for John Kennedy to go against Eisenhower.
With the Bay of Pigs, he committed to that policy—that Allen Dulles had
put into effect—of invading Cuba through proxy groups. With Vietnam,
he continued the policy of containing Communism. He put noncombat
advisers into Vietnam, and he took the number from eight hundred to
about sixteen thousand in 1963. But there was no combat role assigned
to them, and he was very clear about that. He didn't want to put ground
troops in. He said it repeatedly. He was pressured, but at the end of the
day, he signaled his intention to withdraw. He was withdrawing the first
thousand. He said to his friend Kenny O’Donnell, “I cannot do this, with-
draw from Vietnam, until after the election of 64. I can do it in’65. Pll
363
WHERE WERE You?
be very unpopular, but we wont
have a crusade like a McCarthy
crusade against me. I'll be the
most hated man in America,
but I can do it then.” Everything
hinges on that second election
of 1964, everything, the whole
balance of his presidency.
Kennedy was gambler, but
he would only go so far. He
was very conscious of being
elected, because he'd just been
barely elected in 1960. However,
against Goldwater, how could he
have lost? You have to ask, look-
ing back now, when you realize
how unsettling Goldwater was
to the majority of Americans. Kennedy would have swept in a landslide,
and it would have given him far more juice for the second term.
My father was very much against Kennedy and was a Nixon man and
an Eisenhower Republican conservative. He thought Kennedy was on
the left. It came up at the dinner table more than once. My dad was very
outspoken and a very powerful, intelligent man. I supported Goldwater in
64. I was conservative, and Kennedy was definitely seen as a person who
was selling out to the Soviets—signing the nuclear treaty, the partial test
ban—and was seen as a shaker-upper and pro-Cuba even. ‘Those feelings
were in the air, and I felt them.
_T liked Goldwater because he was outspoken. He was a man who said
what he thought. He seemed like he wasn't slick. He wasnt charming.
He was sort of a prototype of the rugged John Wayne Westerner. As an
East Coast boy living a rather limited life, I fell for it. Goldwater was my
candidate in 64. It’s unbelievable now that I’m saying this, but you have
to think about the mood of the country and where I came from. I had
movie heroes, and he seemed like a movie type. He knew what he wanted.
I didn’t realize the danger implicit in his words at that point. I read a few
364
OLIVER STONE
of those John Birch manuals, and I thought, It kind of makes sense. Not
that I was against godless atheists, but something about the United States
seemed to lack a resolution, a spark. We seemed to lack will, and my father
would talk about that.
I respected my father a lot, and I had those feelings probably, but as
the years went on and my parents got divorced, I moved out. I went to
boarding school. I saw another Kennedy. I started to see a young, hand-
some president, very gallant and moving. But I had no strong opinions.
This Kennedy group was something new and special. He was hatless
at the inauguration. It seemed like everything was different about him. He
was a young man. Nixon, Eisenhower, and Johnson, all these people were
the older generation from World War II. Something about Jack Kennedy
said young. Ihe Kennedys were highly glamorous, and I fell for that too.
My mother was French, and she was glamorous, and because Jacqueline
Kennedy evoked France too, she was very much a darling. No, if anything,
they were in the upper class of American society, because we always had
a menu. We lost our upper classes at some point in the World War II era.
Kennedy’s eyes were too large in his head, but he was very handsome,
and he spoke beautifully well—his oratory, the way he handled himself,
the grace under pressure. As I said in my documentary The Untold History
of the United States, he was aloof from fear. Despite all the pressure that
came down on him, he stayed, like Roosevelt, above it, away from it. He
didnt seem to be bothered by it. I’m sure he took home his fears and his
doubts, but he never expressed them.
~~ aulŘŘ
I don't think Oswald shot anyone that day. He was on the second floor,
where he claimed to have been having lunch, when the shot went off.
He was put there. There were people on the sixth floor, absolutely, more
than one. There were people in the Dal-Tex building. I do think he shot
at Walker. You have to look at Lee Oswald as a jigsaw man. He was put
together, from the time he was in the Marines and he studied Russian,
when he was sent to Russia, when he came back from Russia, he worked
at a series of jobs that were assigned to him. Nothing is very clear. When
you follow the Oswald path, you're going to end up in a maze. But what’s
365
WHERE WERE You?
“Was it Colonel Mustard
Years and years later, Bill went
to Dealey Plaza and saw the with a lead pipe 2?
museum that’s there. He was
I
WHERE WERE You?
looking at raw footage from the media of that day, and he says, “God, you
know, I wonder if they’ll have any footage of outside the hotel where we
saw the president of the United States.” Sure enough, the camera panned
right past him on his dad’s shoulders. That fostered in him a conversation
that we had about that day and what it meant to us as Americans—literally
little boys as Americans—where suddenly an aspect of our country and
our consciousness was snapped in two, and for us it was now forever:
“That was before Kennedy was killed,” and then, “That was right after
Kennedy was killed,” which is one of the acts of our lives we go back over
and over again in one way or another.
From that we read Vince Bugliosi’s book. Now understand: Bugliosi
is a prosecutor. He’s not an author or a journalist per se; he is a prosecu-
tor. That’s how he wrote this book. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to go
through the facts of what went on that day and all the theories that slowly
get broken down. Eventually questions are answered every step of the way
that always bring it back to this concept: There is an evil aspect of human
nature. There is a sad part of ourselves that is broken up into individuals,
and when it lands in an individual as it did with Lee Harvey Oswald, you
have to throw up your hands and essentially curse divine providence that
makes this happen.
There’s an amazing story I read about Robert Oswald. If you ask your
average American about Lee Harvey Oswald's brother, no one knows that
Lee Harvey Oswald had a brother who lived in Dallas, who hung out with
his brother all the time, who saw him regularly and knew, “My brother's
a weird guy.” I’m paraphrasing here, but this is essentially what he was. I
don’t know why Robert Oswald never appears in any of these conspiracy
theories, but he picked up his brother when he moved to Dallas with his
Russian bride. Lee Harvey Oswald went to Russia. He was a big celebrity
for a while, then he stopped being a big celebrity, and he was just working
at a radio factory in Minsk. I’m going to guess that anybody who spends
a lot of time in the 1960s working at a radio factory in Minsk might want
to get out of Minsk. His beautiful wife, who was also working in Minsk
and probably wanted to get out of there, and Lee Harvey Oswald came
back from Russia. They had been interviewed a little bit, and he was used
to being the guy who had a microphone shoved in front of him. When
Be
Tom Hanks
he went to Russia, he had all the Russian media saying, “You are a true
wonderful man, and thank you for coming, and youre a bit of a hero, and
isn't it great to have you here?”
When Robert Oswald picked up his brother at Love Field, when
he flew in from New York City, Lee Harvey Oswald came off the plane
and said to his brother, “Where are the reporters?” He was anticipating
his return to Dallas as being a much heralded news story, that he would
be something of a big shot. Robert said, “Lee, you're just some guy.” You
hear that kind of story, which tells me, as an actor and as a guy who tells
stories, that is human nature. It’s no surprise, nor should it be any shock
when you come around to the idea of, well, that’s the man who shot the
president of the United States.
Parkland Hospital was/is staffed by folks who were good at what they
did. Everything was standard operating procedure. [here was a staff on
who came in, and all they did was have their morning coffee and flirted
with each other, and the day wasn't going to be anything more unique.
‘They weren't going to see the president of the United States, even though
it was in the papers; it was on the radio. They were just going about their
day. Lo and behold: Before they knew it, the shot president of the United
States was in their care, was in those rooms, was in their hospital, and was
forever a part of their lives, and only a few hours later the man who shot
the president of the United States was in their hospital and in their lives
dndi their care.
History is made up of those types of witnesses who weren't the princi-
pal players, who weren't the strategists, who weren't the people that made
it happen. ‘They were literally the witnesses who saw it all come down. If
my life was changed as a seven-year-old who found out about it because
the principal walked into our art class in the afternoon, their lives were
forever altered by the fact that they were good at what they did. I don’t
think you could find a better microcosm or a better example of what hap-
pened to the United States of America as a whole than what happened
to those people in Parkland Hospital that day. That’s a fascinating story.
‘There are four stories that we tell in Parkland. It’s about the people who
were there, but it’s also about Robert Oswald. It’s about James Hosty, the
FBI guy who had a brush with Lee Harvey Oswald a few weeks prior. It’s
393
WHERE WERE You?
I dont think you could find a better microcosm or
a better example of what happened to the United
States of America as a whole than what happened
to those people in Parkland Hospital that day.
also about Abe Zapruder, whose life was turned upside down by the fact
that he had this new movie camera with the latest version of Kodachrome
film inside it.
I remember reading what could we have expected from the rest of
the Kennedy presidency. He was having trouble getting legislation passed
in Congress. He had this brewing hot spot that was halfway across the
world in Vietnam and Indochina. He would’ve—might’ve even—had a
tough reelection campaign in 1964, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t
nearly fill me with the same brand of satisfaction as going back through
the actual historical record, because what really happened, to me, is always
infinitely more fascinating and never stops being a source for the mirror
being held up to human nature.
I was fascinated by the movie JFK. I thought it was great; I thought it
was brilliant. I thought it was filled with moments of very sharply percep-
tive questioning. At the same time, it’s filled with more hooey than you
could possibly imagine. Oliver Stone is a great filmmaker—he won the
Academy Award for that film, and rightly so, because it’s one cracker-
jack piece of filmmaking. But there’s a scene in it where Donald Suther-
land, as Mr. X, is explaining in the grimmest veritas possible and asking
the question, “Why was the Washington, DC, telephone exchange shut
down immediately after the assassination of the president of the United
States?” You know why it was shut down? Because everybody was on the
phone! All the circuits were busy—something that happened all the time
if everybody tried to use the phone. You would pick up, and you would
dial, and they'd say, “all our lines are down. All of our circuits are busy.
Please try again later.” You got the recording. That’s part of that fun thing
‘Tom Hanks
that says, “Here’s some-
thing that happened, and
isnt there a diabolical
answer to this very simple
question?” Well, not a dia-
bolical answer at all. It’s
loaded with those types
of things that you have to
chalk up as just being part
of the parlor game: The
Assassination of the Pres-
ident of the United States.
Making a movie of
the Kennedy years? ‘This
comes along a lot in my
business: Can making this story up—re-creating it, having look-alikes
and all the other necessities of making a theatrical film—be better than
just the greatest documentary ever made, that you can do on American
Masters, that NBC News could do about the thousand-day presidency of
John F. Kennedy? I don’t think you could do as good a job of it. You're
going to be falling down into some degree of melodrama, which at best
can be quasi-accurate, and that’s not as good as being accurate or quite
simply turgid. I'll spend my time other ways.
His personal weaknesses haven't altered my opinion of him. No, we’re
all cracked vessels, including all the presidents of the United States. We
had a guy who was complicit with the press in hiding the fact that he was
in a wheelchair: Franklin Delano Roosevelt—and he drank. He loved his
martinis at the end of the day. Not all that stuff goes into the hopper of
“Human beings are odd, folks.” Nobody’s perfect; we all have feet of clay,
and it’s only some other kind of outrage machines that want to hold up
the worst aspects of our weaknesses as being the definition of our total
selves. Yeah, without a doubt, those Kennedy years could be described as
being racy all right, but so are our baseball heroes. ‘They end up having
the same sort of individual lives that don't diminish the fact of what they
meant to this society and what they mean to us in our individual concepts
395
WHERE WERE YOU?
of them: Kennedy and his fam-
We're all cracked vessels, ily, extraordinarily wealthy, very
r ’ A charismatic and handsome, and
a cluding all the PÊ rest- dysfunctional to a fault, yes.
dents of the United States. That what’s great about it,
and one of the reasons were so
fascinated is that they’re a clan.
They have this great commonal-
ity in that they were part of that generation—Joseph and Rose Kennedy
gave birth to this phalanx of people who ended up doing incredible things
and being part of us all. From that comes this concept of service that
you render. Not all of them, not all of the Kennedys have gone into the
same degree of public service, but that first or second generation did. They
have massive amounts of sad history and, at the same time, of incredibly
impressive achievement, and yet we'll be turning to them again and again
for aspects of our human nature. ‘The best and the worst is all right on
display right there.
396
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The compiling editors would like to thank NBC News senior executive
producer David Corvo, former news president Steve Capus, and vet-
eran correspondent Tom Brokaw for their initial faith in the television
project on which this book is based. At 30 Rock, everyone working on
the Where Were You? special performed with tireless professionalism and
good humor. They include coordinating producer Clare Duffy, associate
producer Loren Burlando, coordinating producer Kallie Ejigu, associate
producer Nick Johnson, and talent coordinating producer Jennifer Sher-
wood. [he members of our technical crew likewise performed smoothly
at the top of their craft, especially Greg Andracke, Rich White, Shawn
Sullivan, Rick Albright, and Everett Wong. Endeavors such as this could
not exist without the able assistance of staff interns, and we were most
fortunate to have the services of Amanda Hari, Courtney Marmon, Kaila
Ward, and Charlotte Lewis. Show editor Pascal Akesson crunched a mas-
sive amount of material into a seamless finished product, and Kathleen
Berger at Transcript Associates saw that accurate interview transcripts
were turned around quickly. Special thanks go to NBC News correspon-
dent Anne ‘Thompson for the use of her pad.
N. S. Bienstock ‘Talent Agency found a home for the book and then
performed yeomen’s work in negotiating a complex multiparty agree-
ment. At NSB, special thanks go to agents Steve Sadicario (TV) and
Paul Fedorko (book) and able assistant Sammy Bina.
At Lyons Press, editor James Jayo, project editor Meredith Dias, copy-
editor Paulette Baker, and publicist Laurie Kenney all performed remark-
ably on a seemingly impossible deadline. Research assistance and general
support for the project were supplied by “Genius” Lucas Lechowski, Dr.
Agnieszka Szostakowska, Aaron Sichel, Dale Myers, Jay Greer, Brendan
Kennedy, Karen Stefanisko, Randy Lehrer, and the countless archivists
and librarians whose expertise and assistance make these projects pos-
sible. Jem, Watson, and Z kept things in perspective as always.
Last but not least, sincere thanks go to all of the interviewees who
trusted us with their memories.
397
INDEX
“Abraham, Martin, and John,” 343
Addison’s disease, 16, 237-38
Air Force One, 22, 25-27, 351
Alaskan Health Care Federations, 114
Alcock, James, 160, 257
Aldrin, Buzz, 306
Alger, Bruce, 87
Alliance for Progress, 115, 215, 220, 226
Alpha 66 Movement, 160
Alsop, Joe, 319
Altman, Larry, 169
AM/LASH, 100-101
American Trial Lawyer’s Association, 288
American University, 125, 249
Amnesty International USA, 323
Andrews, Dean, 268
Anglin, Patsy, 42
Apollo 13, 391
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, 311
Arcacha, Sergio, 158-60
Arlington Cemetery, 93-94
Armstrong, Neil, 306
Assassination Records Review: Board, 290
B’nai Brith, 350
Bailey, F. Lee, 289
Baker, Ella, 141
Balaban, Judy, 321
Baldwin, James, 324-25
Banister, Guy, 370
Barker, Eddie, 5
Barnett, Ross, 178-79
Barnicle, Mike, 129-33
Bartes, Frank, 155
Bartlett, Charlie, 239
Bay of Pigs, 75-76, 80, 76, 101-2, 118,
150-51, 156, 162, 169,212, 270, 290,
304, 363, 373
Beatles, the, 315, 352
Belafonte, Harry, 134-44
Bertrand, Clay/Clem, 255-56, 268, 371
Biden, Joseph, 221-25
Bill Stuckey Radio Show, 150
Birch Society, 86
Birch, John, 365
black ops, 366-67, 369
Black Panthers, 141
Blakey, G. Robert, 290
Bond, Julian, 141
Booth, John Wilkes, 366, 384
Born on the Fourth of July, 369, 371
Boston bombing, 78, 142
Bowles, Chester, 246
Boys Nation, 214, 216-17
Braden, Tom, 177
Bradlee, Ben, 166, 235, 239
Branch, Taylor, 102
Brennan, Ella, 264
Bretos, Miguel, 160
Brewer, John, ix, 46-56
Bringuier, Carlos, 150-64
Britt, May, 357
Brokaw, Tom, vii-x
Brown, H. Rap, 272
Brown, Harold, 212
Bruce, Lenny, 245, 382
Buchanan, Pat, 177-83
Bugliosi, Vincent, 247, 287-299, 392
Bundy, McGeorge, 29, 252
Burnett, Carol, 337
Burrows, Butch, 49
Bush, George W., 312, 368
Butler, Ed, 154, 156-57
Cabell, Earl, 87,373
Califano, Joseph, ix, 93-103
Camelot, vii, 101-2, 181, 233, 240, 242, 314,
626, 55/500
Camelot (play), 186, 315, 322
Capitol Records, 315, 320
Caplan, Gerald, 112-13
Carlson, Richard, 366
Caro, Robert, 16-29
Carousel Club, 86, 294
Carpenter, Scott, 308
Carrico, Jim, 11
Carroll, Dan, 222
Carroll, Dick, 245
Carter, Jason, 212
Carter, Jimmy, 146, 149, 166, 209-213, 232
Casa Roca, 150, 162
Casals, Pablo, 250, 324
Cassini, Oleg, 318
Castro, Fidel, ix, 75-76, 96-101, 121, 150-51,
154-58, 162-63, 173, 242, 304, 367
Castro, Manolo, 157
398
INDEX
CBS News, 5-7
Chamberlain, Neville, 236
Chandler, David, 161, 268
Chicago, Illinois, 145, 195-97
Chris Matthews Show, The, 232
Christenberry, Herbert, 258-59, 266
Churchill, Pamela, 16, 237
Churchill, Winston, 236
CIA, 79, 96-97, 99-101, 103, 142, 157, 278,
281, 284, 292, 297-99, 344, 366-67, 371
Civil Rights Act, x, 27 28.2988 10122123;
145, 351-52, 384
civil rights movement, 28, 116, 123, 125, 134-
35, 139-41, 147-49, 171-72, 178-79,
200, 215-16, 218, 236, 254, 350
Clark, Kemp, 10-11
Clark, Ramsey, 94
Clark, Septima, 147
Clayburgh, Jill, 354
Clinton Global Initiative, 214
Clinton, Bill, 146, 149, 195, 199, 203,
214-20
Coe, Doyle, 218
Cohen, Wilbur, 104
Cold War, 55, 74-75, 77, 80, 101, 147,175, -
202, 212-23, 216, 236, 303, 339-40,
366, 370, 389
Collins, Dorothy, 347
Collins, Judy, 347-53
Communism, 75, 77-78, 80, 203-4, 222, 303, 363
Connally, John, 14, 22, 24, 278
Connally, Nellie, 22
conspiracy theories, 65, 71/2, 121-22) 173,
182, 229, 242, 290-93, 296-99, 342,
344, 355, 378, 390-92
acoustics, 291-92, 296
Clay Shaw, 253-61, 265, 282
Cubans, 98-101, 122, 269, 278, 282, 290-
91, 391, 158-59, 162-63
government, 277-82, 295, 342, 366-67,
369, 371
grassy knoll, 292
H. L. Hunt, 207-8
Jim Garrisons, 159, 265
Watray 122, 161, 269) 272-75, 276, 292;
294-95, 278-99, 342, 391
Oliver Stone’s, 365-67, 369, 371-72
“a powerful domestic force,” 247-49
right-wing forces, 79, 203, 207, 164
triangulation of crossfire, 255, 265
Cook, Jack Kent, 358
Costa-Gavras, 331
Costner, Kevin, 161, 164, 182, 267
Cotton, Dorothy, 147
Cottrell, Sterling, 96
Crawford, Joan, 316-17
Cronkite, Walter, 99, 210, 242, 262
Cruz, Miguel, 152
Cuba, 75-77, 96-102, 150, 163-64, 167-68,
173, 222, 304, 373-74
Cuban brigades, 96, 99, 156, 290-91 -
Cuban Missile Crisis, 13, 19, 27,29, 55, 75,
TOS eo 175; lie Gone, 2A,
223, 236,270,349, 355, 375
Cuban Revolutionary Council, 158
Cuban Student Directorate, 151
Daley, Bill, 195-202
Daley, John, 199-201
Daley, Richard, 195-96, 198-202
Daley, Rich, 198
Dallas, 88
Dallas Cowboys, 88
Dallas Morning News, 86
Dallas Police Department, 36-37, 54, 58,
293-94, 296
Dallas Times Herald, 81-82, 84-85
Dallas, Texas, vii, 263,371
political climate, 60, 81, 86-88, 204-5
reaction to assassination, 8—9, 54, 86-88
Dalleck, Robert, 15
Dassin, Jules, 140
Davis, Sammy Jr., 357
Day-Lewis, Daniel, 381
Dealey Plaza, 34, 282, 291, 293, 296, 369,
384, 391
Decker, Bill, 292
de Gaulle, Charles, 109-10
Delon, Alain, 329
Dempsey, Jack, 263
De Niro, Robert, 354-55
De Palma, Brian, 354
Diamond, Irving, 257
Diem, Neo Dinh, 98-99, 175, 178, 182-83, 200
DiSalle, Mike, 238
Dixiecrats, 136, 144, 216
Doar, John, 215
Dolan, Joe, 96
399
INDEX
Dominican Republic, 173
Domino Theory, 230, 295, 363 `
Dougherty, Jack, 32-33 . i
Downing, Thomas, 280, 285
Duchin, Peter, 320
Duke, Angie, 108-9
Dullea, Keir, 330
Dulles, Allen, 363, 373
Dungan, Ralph, 107
Ebbins, Milt, 245
Edwards, India, 238
Eisenhower, Dwight, viii, 66, 96, 101, 109-10,
116, 149, 166, 193, 233, 304, 309, 320,
337, 363
Encyclopedia Brittanica, 282
English, Joe, 104-14
Epstein, Edward J., 71
Ethiopia, 173
Evers, Medgar, 140
Executive Action, 208
Fair Play for Cuba Committee, 150, 154
Fall, Bernard, 230
Fallaci, Oriana, 162
Faulkner, William, 262
Fay, Kathy, 189-94
Fay, Paul “Red” Jr., 184-85, 188, 189-94, 240
Fay, Paul TII, 189-94
Fay, Sally, 189-91
FBI, 251, 268, 366
Fehmer, Marie, 26
Feldman, Charlie, 315-17
Ferrie, David, 158-59, 249, 256, 265, 272-73,
370-71
Fink, Pierre, 371
Finnegan, Jean, 221
Fitzgerald, Desmond, 97, 99
“500 Miles,” 338
folk music, 336, 339, 343, 347, 349, 352-53
Fonda, Afdera, 319
Fonda, Henry, 319, 320, 329
Fonda, Jane, 329-34
football, ix, 88, 120, 356-62
Ford, Gerald, 100, 177,211
Foreign Relations Committee, 221
Forest Hills High School, 277
Fort Worth Press, 81
Fort Worth, Texas, 81-82, 87, 391
Franciosa, Judy, 321
Frazier, Buell, ix, 30—40
Freedom of Information Act, 99, 290
Freedom Riders, 134
French Quarter, 254, 256, 260
Friendship 7, 305, 307, 309
Fritz, Will, 37, 52-53, 368
Frost, Robert, 320, 323
Fuentes, Miguel Ydigoras, 162
Gagarin, Yuri, 304-5
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 118, 205, 240
Gannon, Frank, 184-88
Garrison, Jim, 72, 158-62, 164, 247-52, 253,
255-60, 262-70, 273, 283, 292, 363,
369-71
Gentlemens Quarterly, 168
Georgetown University, 184, 214, 216, 219
Gervais, Pershing, 265, 267-68
GI Bill, 166
Gilruth, Bob, 306
Glenn, Annie, 310
Glenn, John, 177-78, 303-314
Goebbels, Joseph, 297
Gold, Lynn, 350
Goldwater, Barry, 181, 183, 209, 236, 364
Goodnight America, 280
Goodwin, Doris Kearns, 115-26, 331
Goodwin, Richard, 106, 115-26
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 74
Gore, Al, 217
Graham, Kay, 118
Grant, Eva, 68
grassy knoll, 3—4, 83, 182, 277, 282, 291
Greenwich Village, 335, 347, 349
Gregory, Dick, 145,277
Groden, Robert, 277-86
Grossman, Amy, 13
Grossman, Ellen, 13
Grossman, Kate, 13
Grossman, Robert, 10-15
Guatemala, 150, 269
Guevara, Che, 121, 163
Gulf of Mexico, 175
Gulf of Tonkin, 230, 332, 372
Guns of August, The, 19
Gurvich, William, 159, 255
Guthrie, Woody, 347, 349
400
Halberstam, David, 338
Hanks, Tom, 386-96
Hanoi, Vietnam, 332
Hardball with Chris Matthews, 129, 232
Hardwood, Richard, 238
Hardy’s Shoe Store, 46
Hart, Gary, 168
Harvard University, 203, 227
Hawkins, Ray, 46, 50-55
Haynes, Racehorse, 289
Hefner, Hugh, 247
Heidelberg, Germany, 208
Helms, Dick, 97-99, 101
Hemingway, Ernest, 233
Hernandez, Celso, 152
Herter Committee, 187
Hickory Hill, 25, 310
Hill School, the, 363,367
Hiss, Alger, 205
Hitler, Adolf, 98-99
Holt, Will, 350
Hoover, J. Edgar, 26, 139, 179, 188
Hosty, James, 393
House Select Committee on Assassinations,
277-78, 280-82, 285, 290-92
Hufty, Alex, 177
Hufty, Page Lee, 177
Hufty, Page, 177
Humphrey, Hubert, 203, 238
Hunt, E. Howard, 208
Hunt, H. L., 203-8
Hunt, Helen, 206-7
Hunt, Swanee, 203-8
Hurt, John, 366
Hyannis, Massachusetts, 106, 132-33, 227,
310-11, 325, 333-34
“I Believe in You,” 186
ICBMs, 305
“Ich Bin ein Berliner” speech, 236, 377
“I Have a Dream” speech, 116, 134, 139
“If Ever I Would Leave You,” 186
“If I Had a Hammer,” 337-39
I Led Three Lives, 366-67
Inquest, 71
Inside: A Public and Private Life, 99
Interdepartmental Coordinating Committee
for Cuban Affairs, 96
International House, 153
INDEX
International Space Station, 309, 312
International Spy Museum, 74
Iran-Contra scandal, 295
Irish Mafia, 238-40
Irving, Texas, 36
I've Got a Secret, 383
Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero, 232, 328
Jacks, Hershel, 23
Jackson, Scoop, 235
Jacobson, Max, 170
James, Rosemary, 262-70
Japan, 234
Jarman, Junior, 33
JFK Act, 290
JFK (movie), 150, 161, 267-68, 277, 283-4,
363, 371, 376, 378, 394
JFK: Absolute Proof, 285
Job Corps, 114
Joel, Billy, 186
John Glenn School of Public Affairs, 313
Johnson, Eric, 87
Johnson, Ladybird, 20, 22-23
Johnson, Lyndon B., 82, 93, 104, 146, 165,
215-16
belief that Castro killed Kennedy, 98-99,
biographer of, 16
Civil Rights Act, x, 27-28, 101-3, 123, 211
civil rights, 148-49, 331
Cuba, 99-102 -
during the assassination, 22-2
involvement in assassination, 278
Kennedy’s funeral, 110-11
1960 election, 20-21
opinion of John F. Kennedy, 18-19
presidency of, 24-29, 88, 101-2, 123-24,
182-83, 211, 220, 326, 331, 351-52
public opinion of, 8
relationship to Kennedys, 21-22, 119-20,
122 235
Russian reaction to, 80
as Senator, 19, 21
and Marie Tippit, 44
vice presidency, 21-22,
Vietnam War, 124, 175, 230-31,
250-51, 372
Warren Commission, 71, 100, 157
Johnson Space Center, 311
Jonah, Dolly, 350
401
INDEX
Jones, Penn, 71
Jurgensen, Sonny, 356-62
Kalugin, Oleg, 74-80
Kammerer, Carl, 356-62
Kapuscinski, Ryszard, 173
Katzenbach, Nicholas, 26
Keating, Kenneth, 17
Kefauver, Estes, 319
Kelly, Gene, 246, 337
Kennedy Center, 101
Kennedy or Nixon, 180
Kennedy School of Government, 203
Kennedy, Caroline, 186, 326-27
Kennedy, Edward “Teddy,” 72, 106, 130-31,
133, 227-28, 248, 319, 326, 329-30
Kennedy, Ethel, 25-26, 138, 310, 325, 349, 358
Kennedy, Jacqueline, vii, 82, 155, 190, 240,
318-20
children, 166, 186
on conspiracy theories, 248
and the Clintons, 219
as an editor, 327
family of, 326-27
funeral arrangements, 93, 95, 107-8, 110,
118-19
and John Glenn, 311
letter to Marie Tippit, ix, 44
reaction to assassination, 7, 12, 25-27,
192, 322
Kennedy, Jean, 187
Kennedy, Joe Jr., 131
Kennedy, John “John-John” F. Jr., 132, 186,
326, 382-83
Kennedy, John F.
amphetamine use, 170-71
as an Irish Catholic, 131, 133, 195, 198,
2022A
assassination of, 5—6, 10, 22-23, 34, 36,
67, 69, 78-79, 82-85, 129-30, 140-41,
147-48, 155, 158, 162-63, 172-73,
179, 181, 185-88, 191-92, 201-2, 206,
210-11, 218-19, 223, 228-29, 233,
DANA DT AS y AO AA-AAA T
279, 287 88, 295,299 311P 3202r
325-26, 330-31, 340-42, 350-52, 355,
358-61, 366-68, 370-71, 375-76, 382,
384, 387, 390, 392, 395
autopsy, 12-14, 279, 371
402
back pain, 17-19, 116, 171, 233-34, 237
books about, 163-64, 297, 328, 353
burial site, 93-96
Camelot, 233, 240, 242, 314, 328, 337,
376, 381
civil rights movement, 116, 123, 125, 134-
39, 145-47, 171-72, 175, 178-79, 200,
210-11, 215-16, 218, 236, 254, 331
conspiracy theories about, 79, 121-22, 182,
158-59, 162-64, 207-8, 247-49, 255,
DOs 263, 269) 275, 282, 290-9 10 275,
355, 365-67, 370-72, 378, 390, 395
Cuba, 97-98, 101-2, 150, 155-56, 158,
162-3, 180, 222, 304, 373-74
Dallas attitudes toward, 60
eternal flame for, 44, 95, 119
family, 131, 166, 186-87, 195-96, 214-16,
239, 329-30, 348, 396
and Red Fay, 184-85, 188, 189-94
and Jane Fonda, 329
funeral of, 25-27, 95-96, 106-12, 130, 254,
376, 382, 388
health problems, 16-19, 116, 169-70,
236-38
human rights, 213, 215, 327-28
and H. L. Hunt, 203, 207-8
and Lyndon Johnson, 19-21
and Khrushchev, 170-71
and Nancy Olson Livingston, 316-22
Lee Harvey Oswald’s opinion of, 154
legacy of, 9, 15, 27-29, 55, /2- 73,08; 101,
114, 124-26, 148-49, 181-82, 188,
193-94, 211-13, 224, 321-22, 326-28,
333-34, 342, 344-46, 353, 396
Mass card, 108-9
medical care after assassination, 10-15, 393
missing records, 249, 279-80
and Bobby Mitchell, 357-58
mock trial, 288-89
motorcade, vii, 3—4, 22, 33-34, 60
movies about, 375-76, 378-81, 393-95. See
also JFK
1960 election, 19-21, 74-75, 187, 195, 197-
98, 214-25, 221, 225, 235, 238, 245-47
and Richard Nixon, 180, 186-87, 238
Peace Corps, 104-5, 109, 114, 212, 241, 272
personality and charisma, viii, 177-78, 185,
190, 193, 196-97, 227-28, 237-40,
246-47, 276, 277, 350, 354, 365
INDEX
and Peter, Paul, and Mary, 335, 337-39
political consequences of death, 13-14
popularity of, 27-29, 209, 221-22, 337,
341-42, 349, 354
presidency of, x, 66, 102, 116-17, 124-25,
133, 138-39, 165-71, 174-76, 178-79,
183, 200, 215-18, 228, 231, 270, 340,
373-74, 375-78, 380, 389, 394
and the press, 166-69, 216
on the Sequoia, 184-85
space program, 304—9, 311-13, 385
and Rose Styron, 323-25
touch football, viii, 132, 189, 333
Vietnam War, 123-24, 137, 170, 174-76,
194, 200, 212, 218, 230-31, 248-50,
295, 320, 331-32, 363-64, 372
wartime experience, 115-16, 233-35, 237, 287
women, 117-18, 139, 168-69, 180-81, 237,
239-40, 270, 318, 329, 385
Zapruder film of assassination, 5—8, 83-85,
277-80, 353
Kennedy, Joseph P., 17, 131, 168, 180, 187,
195-96, 203, 235, 245-46, 329-30, 333,
348, 396
Kennedy Robert Bobby, 17,20, 72, 129, 131,
186, 210-11, 223-24, 238,270, 326,
333, 340
assassination of, 88, 96, 101, 140, 163, 179,
202, 219-20, 342
as attorney general, 216
civil rights movement, 146
as the enforcer, 251
and Harry Belafonte, 136-38
and Fidel Castro, 96, 98, 100-101
and Cuba, 121-22, 158
funeral arrangements, ix, 93-94, 106
and John Glenn, 310-11
and Lyndon Johnson, 119-20, 122, 235
and Martin Luther King Jr., 179
and Marie Tippit, 43
and Mort Sahl, 248-49
and Bobby Mitchell, 357, 360
reaction to assassination, 26
relationship to Lyndon Johnson, 25-26
Kennedy, Robert Jr., 132
Kennedy, Rose, 237, 396
Kerry, John, 226-31
Kettenring, Mike, 271-76
KGB, 69-70, 74-80, 99, 208
Khayat, Bobby, 358
Khayat, Eddie, 358, 362
Khrushchev, Nikita, 20, 75, 77, 169-71, 204,
236,239,349, 351, 367, 373, 377
Kilduff, Mac, 24
Kilgallen, Dorothy, 383
King, Coretta, 137, 141, 145, 215
King, Martin Luther Jr., 116, 145,215, 272
assassination of, 88, 101, 140, 149, 164,
179, 202, 342
and Harry Belafonte, 134, 136-39, 141-42
` and John F. Kennedy, 146-49, 179, 236,
339-40
Kirk, Phyllis, 247
Kissinger, Henry, 231
Kluge, John, 248
Klute, 329
Knights of the Round Table, 240
Korean War, 216, 303, 305
Kovic, Ron, 369
KRLD radio station, 4-6
Krolak, Bruce, 97
Kushner, Tony, 380
Lahey Clinic, 17
Landgraf, John, 105
Landry, Tom, 54
Lane, Mark, 65, 71, 255-56
Laski, Harold, 170
Lawford, Peter, 245
LeMay, Curtis, 249, 374
Leno, Jay, 382-85
emer Alaw jay, 315, 318-19) 322
Levinson, Stan, 141
Lewis, Joe, 147
Lewis, John, 141
Life magazine, 6-7, 33, 62, 68, 161, 268, 278, 280
Lifeline, 204, 206
Limbaugh, Rush, 207
Lincoln Memorial Bridge, 95
Lincoln, 380
Lincoln, Abraham, 72-73, 117, 119, 380-81,
383-84
Lincoln, Evelyn, 21-22, 338
Lindsay, John, 104
Livingston, Alan, 315, 320
Livingston, Nancy Olson, 315-22
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 17
Lombardi, Vince, 356
403
INDEX
London Weekend Television, 288
Long, Russell, 262,370 ` :
Lumumba, Patrice, 173 *
Macht, Lee, 114
MacMillan, Harold, 179
Mafia, 54, 161, 266, 269, 273-75, 292, 294-95,
297-99, 342, 391
Mailer, Norman, 66, 68, 70
Making of the President, 1960, 196
Malcolm X, 142-43, 149
Manahan, Ray, 172
Manchester, William, 322
Mannlicher-Carcano gun, 69, 293
Manson Family, 287
Marcello, Carlos, 269-70, 273-75
March on Washington, 134
March, Frederick, 324
Marcus, Stanley, 86
Marshall, Burke, 215
Marshall Plan, 146
Martha’s Vineyard, 325-27
Matthews, Chris, 232-42, 328
McCarthy, Gene, 341
McClelland, Robert, 280
McCormick, Harry, 84
McDonald, Nick, 49-51
McGee, Frank, 248
McGovern, George, 251-52
McGrory, Mary, 172
McHugh, Godfrey, 27
McMahon, Paddy, 234
McMillan, Priscilla Johnson, 64
McNamara, Robert, 29, 94—95, 107, 111-12,
250-51, 345
Meader, Vaughn, 382
“Me and My Shadow,” 186
Meagher, Sylvia, 71
Meet the Press, 115
Menjou, Adolphe, 233
Menyano, Rosco, 157
Merchandise Mart, 195
Mercouri, Melina, 140
Meredith, James, 178
Meyer, Cord, 353
Meyer, Mary, 240, 353
Michener, James, 140
Miller, William “Fishbait,” 358
Minsk, Belarus, 69-70, 392
Missile Gap hearings, 93
Mitchell, Bobby, 356-62
Mob, the. See Mafia
Monroe, Marilyn, 168, 378
Montand, Yves, 140, 331, 337
Montero, Frank, 135, 137
Moon mission, 15, 114, 221, 240-41, 304-6,
308, 312, 322, 385
Mooney, Joe, 358
Morgenthau, Robert, 25-26
Mosca, Lisa, 269
Moses, Robert, 16
Moyers, Bill, 107, 111-12, 142
Moynihan, Pat, 172, 232
MSNBC, 177, 232
Mueller, Bob, 230
Muskie, Edmund, 129
NASA, 303, 306, 313, 322
Nash, Diane, 141
National Archives, 279-80, 283, 289-90
National Security Action Memorandum
number 263, 295
New Deal, 125, 146
New Orleans, Louisiana, 58-59, 150-53, 160-
61, 164, 248-49, 253-54, 256, 262-63,
266, 271-73, 370
New Orleans States-Item, 262, 268
New Orleans Times-Picayune, 156, 267-68
New York Times, 76, 113, 118, 167-70, 266,
285,321
New York University, 323, 363, 368
Newark News, 165, 172
Newsday, 17, 24
NEL, 356, 358-59, 362
Nhu, Madame, 67
Nhu, Ngo Dinh, 67
9/11, 142, 201,355
Nixon, Richard, 21, 102, 175, 177, 179-80,
182-83, 186-88, 214, 226, 231, 237-38,
245, 320, 344
Nobel Prize, 209, 323
Oak Cliff, Texas, 36, 41-42, 46, 85-86
Obama, Barack, 143-44, 195, 221, 226, 313,
345,354,375
© Donnelly Kenny, 20, 23,27,97, 118, 363
Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), 366
O'Neill, Tip, 232, 285
404
INDEX
On the Trail of the Assassins, 283-4, 363, 369
Ormsby-Gore, David, 239
Oswald, June, 57
Oswald, Lee Harvey
as an agent of Fidel Castro, 155-56
assassination of John F. Kennedy, 31-33, 35,
60-61, 63, 85, 156, 162, 173, 296, 321
associated with Cubans, 150-55, 160, 162, 164
capture at Texas Theatre, 46-53
conspiracy theories about, 64-65, 70-72,
79, 99-100, 173, 182, 229, 242, 249,
256, 273, 278, 280-81, 282, 291, 293,
297-99, 365-67, 378, 390-92, 395
family life, 39-40, 57-61, 70,
as an FBI informant, 249
and Buell Frazier, 30-31, 38-40
medical treatment of, 13
mock trial of, 288-89, 293, 297
motive, 65
murder of J. D. Tippit, ix
in New Orleans, 150-55, 263, 271
photographed by Lawrence Schiller, 66
in Russia, 30, 68-69, 78, 155, 365-66,
392-93
shooting at Edwin Walker, 62—64, 69, 151,
182, 242, 365
shot by Jack Ruby, 38, 53-54, 64, 86, 156,
181, 229, 247, 294-95, 342, 351, 382, 388
Oswald, Marguerite, 55-56, 61-62
Oswald, Marina, 30, 39, 57-64, 66, 68-70,
78, 366
Oswald, Robert, 392-93
Oswald's Tale, 66, 68, 70
Otis Air Force Base, 130-31
Paine, Michael, 58
Paine, Ruth Hyde, 31, 39, 57-65
Paramount, 315, 318
Parkland Hospital, 5, 10-15, 23, 36, 59, 129,
278,393
Parkland, 386, 393
Pauling, Linus, 323-24
Paxton, Bill, 391-92
Payne, Darwin, 81-89
Peace Corps, 29, 104-6, 109, 112-14, 115,
212, 215, 220, 240-41, 389
Pei, I. M., 87
Pentagon, 23,99
Perry, Malcolm, 11
Peter, Paul, and Mary, 335, 337-38
Philadelphia Eagles, 356
Philip, Prince, 109
Pierpoint, Bob, 4
Plana, Tony, 150
Platoon, 378
Polk, James, 176
Poole, Jay Lawrence, 15
Postal, Julie, 49
Powers, Dave, 239-40
Project Mercury, 306
PT-109, 379
PT boats, 189,237
Putin, Vladimir, 76
Queen Mary Secret Service car, 22
Quiroga, Carlos, 153-54, 158
racism in America, 142-44
Radcliffe, 204
Radio Moscow, 76, 78
Ramsey, Norman, 291
Rather, Dan, 3-9, 262
Rayburn, Sam, 19
Reagan, Ronald, 174, 177
Reclaiming History, 287,290,293
Reedy, George, 171
Reeves, Richard, 165-76
Reid, Geraldine, 280
Reilly Coffee Company, 271
Reston, Scotty, 170
Revell, Jack, 294
Rice, Donna, 168
Richard Nixon Foundation, 184
Rivera, Geraldo, 277, 280
Robertson, Cliff, 379
Robinson, Jackie, 135-36, 147
Rockwell, Norman, 376
Rodriguez, Felix, 163
Romney, George, viii
Romney, Mitt, viii
Roosevelt, Eleanor, 209, 245
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 96, 115, 117, 179, 209,395
Roosevelt, Theodore, 117, 219
Rose, Earl, 12, 36
Rose Garden, 214, 216-17, 220
Rosenfield, Pyle, 83
Rozelle, Pete, 356, 358
Ruby, Earl, 68
405
Ruby, Eva, 294
Ruby, Jack, 38, 53-54, 66, 68, 71, 86, 229, 247,
249, 293-94, 342, 350, 388°
Rumsfeld, Donald, 184
Russell, Dick, 100
Russell, Richard, 148
Russo, Perry Raymond, 255, 371
Sahl, Mort, ix, 245-52
Salinger, Pierre, 20, 324
Santana, Emilio, 160
Saturday Evening Post, 66-68
Sawyer, Diane, 184
Schell, Jonathan, 332
Schiller, Lawrence, 66-73
Schlesinger, Arthur, 118, 164, 180, 240, 252,
296, 319, 324
Scorsese, Martin, 354, 363
Seeger, Pete, 347, 349
segregation, 210-11
Seinfeld, Jerry, 383
Selassie, Haile, 109, 173
Sequoia, 184-86
1789 bar, 184
Shaw, Clay, 72, 161, 248-49, 253-61, 262,
264-70, 273-74, 281, 283-84, 292,
370-71
Shepherd, Al, 304, 308
Shepherd, Louise, 310
Sheridan, Walter, 248
Shriver, Eunice Kennedy, 106, 187
Shriver, Sargent, 104-13, 248, 251, 330
Sidey, Hugh, 168
Sierra Maestra, 157-58
Signoret, Simone, 140, 331
Silberstein, Beverly and Lee, 350
Sinatra, Frank, 134, 138, 245, 315, 347
Sirhan, Sirhan, 163
Sixth Floor Museum, 39, 286
Slayton, Deke, 311
Smathers, George, 239
Smith, Fred, 230
Smith, Howard W., 27-28
Smith, Merriman, vii, 5
Somoza, Anastasio, 162-63
Sorensen, Ted, 120, 164, 171, 238-40, 296, 333
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
(SCLC), 141, 145
space program, 304-9, 311-14
INDEX
Spalding, Chuck, 194
Spalding, Dick, 194
Special Olympics, 356, 362
Spence, Gerry, 289, 297-98
Spielberg, Steven, 375-81
Sputnik, 304-5, 321
Stafford, Tom, 311
Stalin, Joseph, 77, 303
Staubach, Roger, 54
Steinem, Gloria, 204
Stevenson, Adlai, 81, 82, 135-36, 165, 180,
195, 236, 238, 245-46, 319
Stolley, Richard, 6-7, 68
Stone, Oliver, 72, 150, 161, 164, 267-68, 277,
283, 292, 363-74, 376, 378, 394
Stookey, Noel Paul, 335—46
Strasberg, Lee, 329
Strategic Air Command, viii
Stuckey, Bill, 153, 156
Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), 141
Student Revolutionary Directorate, 150
Styron, Alexandra, 327
Styron, Rose, 323-28
Styron, William, 323-25
Suarez Family, 160
Sulzberger, Punch, 113
Sunset Boulevard, 315
Sutherland, Donald, 394
Sutton, Billy, 240
Swanson, Gloria, 348
szulz, Tad, 167
Taft, William Howard, 232
Tawes, J. Millard, 238
Teamsters Union, 270
Ten Park Square, 172
Tet Offensive, 332
Texas School Book Depository, 3, 4, 30, 33,
35 C0 E2 E5 E) DS DE AS
Texas Theatre, 36, 48—49, 85, 293,366
Thompson, Kay, 316
Thornton, Hamilton, 181
Time magazine, 168, 245, 339
Time-Life, 277
Tippit, Allan, 41, 43
Tippit, Brenda, 43, 45
Tippit, Curtis, 45
Tippit, J. D., 37, 41-45, 51-53, 281
406
INDEX
Tippit, Marie, ix, 41-45
Titov, Gherman, 309-10
Tonight Show, The, 382, 384
Trade Expansion Act, 183
Trade Mart, 3—4, 82, 371
Travel, Janet, 17-13
Travers, Mary, 335, 338, 340
Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, ‘The, 66
triangulation of crossfire, 255, 265
Trujillo, Rafael, 173
Truly, Roy, 33, 35
Truman, Harry S., viii, 109-10, 179, 198-99,
DO 222
Truth and Consequences, 259, 266
Tsarnaev brothers, 78-79
‘Tuchman, Barbara, 19
Tulane University, 154
Tunheim, John, 290
Tunney, John, 129
26th of July Movement, 157-58
Twin Towers, 142
UCLA 237,315
Unbroken, 234
Unfinished Life, An, 15
United Nations, 76, 204
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 213
University of Alabama, 172
University of Delaware, 221, 223
University of Havana, 157
University of Mississippi, 172, 178
University of Pennsylvania, 359
University of Southern California, 165
University of Wisconsin, 104
Untold History of the United States, The, 365, 372
USSR, 74-75, 77-80, 298, 303-5, 309,
311-12
Vadim, Vanessa, 330
Vance, Ciz 3, 95-93
Vietnam War, x, 123-24, 137, 170, 174-76,
182-83, 194, 200, 212, 218, 226,
230-31, 248-50, 295, 303, 305, 320,
331-32, 344-45, 347, 349, 351, 363,
368-69, 372
Village of Ben Suc, ‘The, 332
Voting Rights Act, 88, 103, 216
Walker, Edwin, 62-64, 69, 151, 182, 242, 365
Walker, John, 74
Wallace, George, 183, 179
Walsh, Denny, 181
War on Poverty, 104, 114
Warner Brothers, 363, 379
Warren Commission, 14, 64-65, 71, 86,
98-100, 157, 164, 173, 182, 193-94,
248, 249, 262, 275, 280-82, 288-90,
297, 296-97, 367-69
Warren, Earl, 100, 289
Warren, Stafford, 106
Washington Redskins, 356, 359
Washington, DC, 101, 130, 214, 356
Watergate scandal, 216, 295, 369
Wegmann, Billy, 257
Wegmann, Cynthia, 253-61
Wegmann, Dirk, 257
Wegmann, Edward, 253-60
“What’s Right with Dallas,” 86-87
White, Josh, 350
White, Theodore, 196
Why England Slept, 19
Wilder, Billy, 315
William Brothers, 316
William Morris Agency, 250
Williams, Edward Bennett, 358
Winters, Jonathan, 245
Wofford, Harris, 136, 171
World War II, 76, 103, 115, 131, 145-46, 166,
214, 216, 233-34, 303, 305, 365, 372,
384, 388-89
Yale University, 120, 227-28, 368
Yarborough, Ralph, 22, 82
Yarrow, Peter, 335-46
Years of Lyndon Johnson, ‘The, 16
Young, Andrew, ix, 141-42, 145-49
Youngblood, Rufus, 22-23, 25
Zaprudennlm, 5 8.838527780353
Zapruder, Abraham, 6, 83-85, 89, 394
407
ABOUT THE EDITORS
Gus Russo is the author of six books, including Brothers in Arms. The Ken-
nedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, winner of the New York Book
Festival’s History Prize. An investigative reporter for ABC News Special
Reports (“Dangerous World: The Kennedy Years”) and CBS Reports, he
served as lead reporter for Frontline’s landmark “Who Was Lee Har-
vey Oswald?” He has written for American Heritage, Baltimore Sun, Book
Forum, Huffington Post, The Nation, and Washington Post. He lives in Bal-
timore, Maryland.
Harry Moses has written, directed, and produced numerous primetime
specials for all major networks and cable channels, including nearly one
hundred stories for 60 Minutes. He has received Emmy, Peabody, and
Directors Guild of America awards as well as a lifetime achievement
award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. He
lives in New York City.
Gus Russo is the author of six books,
including Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys,
the Castros, and the Politics of Murder,
winner of the New York Book Festival’s
History Prize. An investigative reporter for
ABC News Special Reports (“Dangerous
World: The Kennedy Years”) and CBS
Reports, he served as lead reporter for
Frontline’s landmark “Who Was Lee Harvey
Oswald?” He has written for the Baltimore
Sun, The Nation, Washington Post, Book
Forum, American Heritage, and Huffington
Post and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Harry Moses has written, directed, and
produced numerous primetime specials for all
major networks and cable channels, including
nearly one hundred stories for 60 Minutes.
He has received Emmy, Peabody, and
Directors Guild of America Awards as well
as a lifetime achievement award from the
National Academy of Television Arts and
Sciences. He lives in New York City.
? | Cover design by Diana Nuhn
| rd ry Top cover photograph © Bettmann/CORBIS
Bottom cover photograph courtesy of the
Library of Congress
Lyons Press is an imprint of
Globe Pequot Press
Guilford, Connecticut
LyonsPress.com
aon
_ The companion to the special two-hour
NBC. documentary event Where Were You?
published to coincide with the 50th mT
Ee of the assassination
FEATURING
Mike Barniele i
E Harry Belafonte .
Joseph Biden |
_ John Brewer.
Carlos Bringuier —
Pat Buchanan
Vincent Bugliosi —
Joseph Califano |
- Robert Caro
Jimmy Carter —
Bill Clinton
Judy Collins
= Bill Daley |
Robert De Niro
` Joe English |
Kathy Fay
Paul Fay. m
Jane Fonda `
Buell Frazier
Frank Gannon —
John Glenn
Richard Goodwin
Robert Groden
Robert Grossman
~ Tom Hanks
- Ray Hawkins
© Swanee Hunt
h,
Ruth Hyde Paine
nas James —
‘Sonny Jurgensen |
- Oleg Kalugin »
Carl Kammerer. |
Doris Kearns Goodwin
John Kerry
Mike Kettenring
_Jay Leno |.
| Chris. Matthews a
Bobby Mitchell. :
Nancy Olson Livingston |
Darwin Payne
Dan Rather - p
Richard Reeves
` Mort Sahl `
Lawrence Schiller
Steven Spielberg
= Oliver Stone
Noel Paul Stookey~
` Rose Styron
Marie Tippit ;
Cynthia Wegmann
Peter Yarrow `
Andrew Young
TATA
9780762794560
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