Reclaiming History Read online

  “That young man,” Kennedy’s cold-war counterpart, Soviet premier Nikita S. Khrushchev, reminisced in sorrow, without the need to say another word. West Berlin mayor Willy Brandt said, “A flame went out for all those who had hoped for a just peace and a better life.”* Eighty-nine-year-old Winston Churchill, hearing the news in London while peering at his TV set with his Clementine, said, “The loss to the United States and to the world is incalculable.” Around the world, “groups divided by deep ideological chasms found common cause in mourning John F. Kennedy…For an hour, at least, he drew men together in universal mourning.”519 In Latin America, grief was pervasive. Brazilian president João Goulart declared three days of official mourning and canceled all of his official engagements. Chilean president Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez declared national mourning, and radio stations replaced all programs with funeral music. Rómulo Betancourt, president of Venezuela, attempting to read to newsmen the message of condolences he had sent to Washington, broke into tears and was unable to go on.520

  But if one were to think that grief over Kennedy’s death was universal, they would be wrong. “An Oklahoma City physician,” author William Manchester writes, “beamed at a grief-stricken visitor and said, ‘God, I hope they got Jackie [too].’ In a small Connecticut city a doctor called ecstatically across Main Street—to an internist who worshiped Kennedy—‘The joy ride’s over. This is one deal Papa Joe can’t fix.’ A woman visiting Amarillo, the second most radical city in Texas [after Dallas], was lunching in the restaurant adjacent to her motel when a score of rejoicing students burst in from a high school directly across the street. ‘Hey, great, JFK’s croaked!’ one shouted with flagrant delight, and the woman, leaving as rapidly as she could, noticed that several diners were smiling back at the boy. In Dallas itself a man whooped and tossed his expensive Stetson in the air, and it was in a wealthy Dallas suburb that the pupils of a fourth-grade class, told that the President of the United States had been murdered in their city, burst into spontaneous applause.”521 Similarly, in the fifth grade of a private school in New Orleans, the teacher was called out of the room by another fifth-grade teacher to listen to a transistor radio bearing the news. When he returned to his class to announce that Kennedy had been shot and killed, spontaneously the pupils cheered and applauded—one girl, the exception, cried.522

  Because of JFK’s open support for civil rights for the nation’s blacks, as indicated, many in the South had detested him. And when news of the shooting and later the death of the president became known, although most in the South—including those like the former Birmingham police commissioner T. Eugene “Bull” Connor, and John Birch Society founder Robert W. Welch Jr., who opposed Kennedy’s civil rights policies—expressed their profound grief over the assassination, some southern newspapers received anonymous, jeering telephone calls: “So they shot the nigger lover. Good for whoever did it.” “He asked for it and I’m damned glad he got it…trying to ram the damn niggers down our throats.”523 Radio also heard from the racial bigots. Before the announcer cut him off, a man who had called a station in Atlanta got in his belief that “any white man who did what [Kennedy] did for niggers should be shot.”524 And it wasn’t just in the South. A young man wearing a swastika on his left arm walked around the state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin, proclaiming that Kennedy’s death was “a miracle for the white race” and telling bystanders he was “celebrating.”525*

  Ralph Emerson McGill, publisher of the Atlanta, Georgia, Constitution, wrote of the antipathy for Kennedy before his death that spilled over, among some, to his demise: “There were businessmen who, in a time when profits were at an all-time high and the domestic economy booming, nonetheless could speak only in hatred of ‘the Kennedys.’ There were evangelists who declared the President to be an anti-Christ, an enemy of God and religion. This hatred could focus on almost anything the President proposed. When he asked for legislation for medical aid for the aged, for example, there were doctors who succumbed to the fever of national unreason and began abusing the President. In locker rooms and at cocktail parties, luncheons and dinners, it became a sort of game to tell vulgar and shabby jokes about the President, his wife and his family. Most of these were repeats of stories in vogue at the time Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt were in the White House.”526†

  In Irving, Texas, Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine are sitting side by side on the sofa watching the television coverage when they hear the news.

  “What a terrible thing for Mrs. Kennedy,” Marina sighs, “and for the children to be left without a father.” Ruth walks about the room crying, while Marina is too stunned to cry, although she feels as though her blood has “stopped running.”527

  In Oak Cliff, police order everyone out of the library at Marsalis and Jefferson, hands high. Officer Walker points out the man he saw run in—Adrian Hamby, a nineteen-year-old Arlington State University student who had dashed into the library, where he worked part-time as a page, to tell friends that the president had been shot. Hamby is terrified as the cops realize the truth. A disappointed Sergeant Owens informs the dispatcher, “It was the wrong man.”528

  1:39 p.m. (2:39 p.m. EST)

  The FBI dispatches its first Teletype, from Director Hoover, to all fifty-five of its field offices. Stamped “Urgent” it reads:

  All offices immediately contact all informants, security, racial and criminal, as well as other sources, for information bearing on assassination of President Kennedy. All offices immediately establish whereabouts of bombing suspects, all known Klan and hate group members, known racial extremists, and any other individuals who on the basis of information available in your files may possibly have been involved.529

  Meanwhile, at Love Field, because he had been alerted to prepare Air Force One for immediate takeoff if necessary, the pilot, Colonel James Swindal, had had the ground air-conditioner disconnected, and the interior of Air Force One is hot and stuffy.530 Since the plane’s own air-conditioning works only when the engines are running, the interior temperature continues to rise slowly but steadily. The shades have been drawn (Agent Youngblood fears a sniper on the roof of the terminal building), the doors locked, and a Secret Service sentinel posted at each one. More agents ring the aircraft on the ground. The Dallas police are patrolling both inside and outside the terminal. Some of them are checking the departure gates for every youngish man who comes close to meeting the broadcast descriptions of the assassin.531

  Johnson could have left Dallas three-quarters of an hour ago, but feeling, he said, a “sharp, painful, and bitter concern and solicitude for Mrs. Kennedy,” he resolves not to leave without the president’s widow, knowing that she would not leave without her husband’s body.532

  He is also anxious to take the oath of office as soon as possible. Johnson’s aides and the congressmen present aren’t quite sure of the procedure. Two of the congressmen, Jack Brooks and Albert Thomas, are in favor of doing it immediately. The third, Thornberry, advises waiting until they get to Washington. No one is clear on the law as mandated by the Constitution, and no one can think where the actual text of the oath might be found. The steadily rising heat in the stateroom* makes clear thought increasingly difficult. The men loosen their ties, open their shirt collars, and fan themselves with papers. The question of how to dramatize the presidential succession is more than symbolic—there is already news of a panic on Wall Street that has wiped out eleven billion dollars of stock values in the little more than an hour since the shooting.

  Johnson goes into the bedroom of the presidential cabin to make private phone calls. He calls Robert Kennedy at his home in Virginia. Relations between the two men have always been frosty. Johnson offers Kennedy words of condolence, and they briefly discuss what is known and what remains unknown about the assassination. The murder, he says, “might be part of a worldwide plot.” Kennedy is unresponsive. He doesn’t understand what Johnson is talking about.

  “A lot of people down here think I should be sworn in right away,” J
ohnson says, moving closer to the point of the call. “Do you have any objection to that?”

  Kennedy is stunned by the question. It has only been an hour since his brother was shot and he doesn’t see what the rush is. Johnson forges ahead.

  “Who could swear me in?” he asks.

  Bobby is in a daze. The events are swirling too fast. He’d like his brother’s body to be returned to Washington before Johnson becomes the new president, but he decides that his feelings are all personal.

  “I’ll be glad to find out,” he tells Johnson. “I’ll call you back.”533

  Johnson then calls a number of political friends in Dallas, finding few of them in their offices. He is particularly anxious to reach federal district judge Sarah Hughes, an old friend and political protégée, on the assumption that she might be able to administer the oath. Judge Hughes is contacted by phone and she agrees to do so.534

  Youngblood, national security uppermost in his mind, hates the idea of remaining parked on the apron at Love Field any longer than necessary. He thinks there are several people on board the plane who can administer the oath—anyone who himself has taken an oath of office, even a Secret Service agent, for example—but he has to wait while Johnson makes a few more calls to Washington, one to his chief aide, Walter Jenkins, another to McGeorge Bundy.535 Neither of them can think where to find the exact text of the oath. Meanwhile, Robert Kennedy has consulted Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach, who finds it easily—in the Constitution itself, Article II, Section 1 [8]. Katzenbach also resolves the question of who is legally empowered to administer the oath—anyone who can take a sworn statement under state or federal laws. Even a justice of the peace will do. Kennedy calls Johnson back with the information, and tells Johnson that the oath should be administered immediately, before taking off for Washington.536

  At Tenth and Patton, police question Barbara and Virginia Davis. Domingo Benavides and Sam Guinyard are nearby as the two young women describe how the gunman ran across their front walk, shaking shells from his revolver into his hand. It doesn’t take long for Benavides to find one of them, near the bushes at the corner of the house. He picks it up in his hand before he thinks that police might check for fingerprints. He drops it, picks it up again with a twig, and puts it into an empty Winston cigarette package. A minute later, he finds a second cartridge shell in a bush. He turns them over to Officer Joe Poe, standing nearby.537

  1:41 p.m.

  Sergeant Gerald Hill takes Patrolman Poe’s squad car back to the scene and hands him the keys. Poe shows the sergeant a Winston cigarette package containing the two spent cartridge casings found by Benavides.538 Hill tells the patrolman to turn them over to the crime lab and radioes the police dispatcher.

  “The shells at the scene indicate that the suspect is armed with an automatic thirty-eight, rather than a pistol,” Hill informs him, unaware that eyewitnesses saw the gunman manually removing the spent shells.539 Police are reconverging on the Tippit murder scene after the false alarm at the Jefferson Branch Library when a civilian witness at the scene gives Hill information that he immediately radios in to the channel 2 dispatcher: “A witness reports that he [the gunman] last was seen in the Abundant Life Temple…We are fixing to go in and shake it down.”540 (If Hill had called into channel 1, the dispatcher would have told him the church had been checked out just seven minutes earlier by Officer M. N. McDonald.) Two women emerge from inside the church and tell Hill they are employees. He asks them if they had seen anybody enter the church. They say no, nobody entered the church but invite him and his people to go inside and check for themselves,541 which the police do,542 finding no one hiding inside.

  At the Tippit murder scene, Captain Westbrook and Sergeant Owens question Mrs. Markham to learn exactly what happened before the shooting. She describes how the gunman seemed to lean on the passenger side of the squad car when he spoke to the officer inside. Crime-lab sergeant W. E. “Pete” Barnes arrives and Westbrook orders him to dust the right passenger side of the car for fingerprints.543 Just below the top part of the right passenger door and also on the right front fender, Barnes finds some smudged prints.544*

  Nearby, Sergeant Richard D. Stringer contacts the channel 2 dispatcher.

  “Could you pass this to someone. The jacket the suspect was wearing over here on Jefferson in this shooting bears the laundry tag with the letter B 9738. See if there is a way you can check this laundry tag.”545

  1:44 p.m.

  Johnny Brewer and Butch Burroughs come out to the box office. They tell Julia Postal that it was too dark to see anything, but they think the man is still inside.546

  “I’m going to call the police,” Postal tells Brewer. “You and Butch get on each of the exit doors and stay there.547

  1:46 p.m.

  Patrolman Bill Anglin, a close friend and neighbor of the slain officer, leans against his own squad car at Tenth and Patton. He still can’t believe it’s true. Yesterday afternoon he and Tippit had installed a new wheel bearing on J. D.’s 1953 Ford. Just a couple of hours ago the two of them knocked off for coffee at the Rebel Drive-In, as they often did. Now, J. D. was dead. For Anglin, it’s nothing short of a nightmare.548

  The police dispatcher is trying to contact Sergeant Owens, who Anglin can see is engrossed in conversation with homicide detective James R. Leavelle. Officer Anglin reaches through the car window and picks up the radio mike. “I’m here at [Unit] 19’s [Owens] location. Message for him?”

  “Ten-four. Have information that a suspect just went in the Texas Theater on West Jefferson,” the dispatcher says. “Suppose to be hiding in the balcony.”549

  Anglin hangs up the transmitter and hollers across the street, “It’s just come over the radio that they’ve got a suspicious person in the Texas Theater!”550

  Everyone sprints for their vehicles, adrenaline pumping.

  The Texas Theater, on Jefferson Boulevard, is about six-tenths of a mile from where Tippit was shot. In less than two minutes, every police car in the area descends on the theater’s two-dozen or so unsuspecting patrons.

  1:48 p.m.

  Julia Postal punches the intercom in the box office and tells the projectionist that she has called the police. He wonders whether he should cut the film off, and she says, “No, let’s wait until they get here.”551

  It seems the minute she hangs up the intercom, the place is swarming with squad cars, police officers, plainclothesmen, and deputy sheriffs—armed to the teeth.

  “Watch him! He’s armed!” one of them shouts.

  “I’ll get that son of a bitch if he’s in there,” another replies.552

  Some of the officers remain outside trying to control the excited crowd materializing from nowhere, a real mob scene.553 Inside the theater, officers order the theater staff to turn up the house lights.554

  Behind the stage Johnny Brewer is standing near the curtains that separate the audience and the exit door on the left side of the screen. When the house lights come up, he steps to the curtain and scans the astonished audience. There he is—the man he saw slip into the theater. He’s sitting in the center section, six or seven rows from the back of the theater. No sooner do the lights come up than the man stands up, and scoots to the aisle to his right. Police are pouring into the lobby. The suspect turns around and sits back down,555 this time in the third row from the back. Suddenly, Brewer hears someone rattling the exit door from the outside. The shoe store manager pushes the door open and is immediately grabbed by two officers as he is exiting. The alley is crawling with cops, some up on the theater’s fire escape.556

  Officer Thomas A. Hutson puts a gun into Brewer’s stomach. “Put your hands up and don’t make a move.” Brewer is shaking.

  “I’m not the one,” he stammers. “I just came back to open the door for you. I work up the street. There’s a guy inside that I was suspicious of.”

  The officer can see that Brewer’s clothing—sport coat and tie—is different from the description of the suspect.r />
  “Is he still there?” Hutson asks.

  “Yes. I just seen him,” Brewer tells him, and leads the lawmen into the theater.557

  1:50 p.m.

  Patrolmen M. N. “Nick” McDonald, C. T. Walker, Ray Hawkins, and Thomas Hutson gather around Brewer as he points out the man in the brown shirt sitting in the main section of the theater on the ground floor, three rows from the back, fifth seat over. From the orientation of the stage looking out toward the audience, McDonald and Walker step out from behind the curtain and walk up the left center aisle and approach two men seated near the front—a diversionary tactic—and order them to their feet. They search them for weapons, all the while keeping an eye on the man in the brown sport shirt. McDonald then walks out of the row to the right center aisle and advances up the aisle. Officers Walker, Hawkins, and Hutson are shadowing McDonald from the left center aisle—the suspect between them. McDonald feigns interest in a man and woman seated across the aisle from the man in the brown shirt, but just as he gets even with him, McDonald spins and faces the suspect.558*

  “Get on your feet,” McDonald orders.

  The man obeys and starts to raise his hands. Officers Walker, Hawkins, and Hutson are moving toward him from the opposite side. McDonald reaches for the suspect’s waist to check for a weapon.