Reclaiming History Read online

  2:15 p.m.

  At the FBI’s Dallas office, Agent James Hosty is immersed in putting together a list of right-wing extremists when his supervisor, Ken Howe, grabs his elbow. “They’ve just arrested a guy named Lee Oswald and they’re booking him for the killing of the policeman over in Oak Cliff,” Howe tells him. “The officer’s name was Tippit.”

  It takes only a second for Hosty to shift from the pile of right-wingers to Lee Oswald. Hosty is in charge of the active file on both Oswalds—Lee and Marina—whom the FBI has considered to be possible espionage risks since their arrival in the United States in 1962. Hosty had learned on November 1 that Lee worked at one of the Texas School Book Depository buildings in Dallas, but he did not know which one.

  “That’s him! Ken, that must be him. Oswald has to be the one who shot Kennedy!” Hosty exclaims, having no basis to believe this other than his instinct that the Kennedy and Tippit murders are probably related. Three weeks ago he received a lengthy report from New Orleans special agent Milton Kaack describing Oswald’s arrest after an altercation that broke out while he was passing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The incident was banal enough. People who pass out flyers on the street, even for kooky organizations, are not necessarily potential assassins.

  “Do you have the Oswald file?” Howe asks.

  “It should be in the active file cabinet,” Hosty replies as they rush over to it. The file is gone, which means the mail clerk probably has it to update it with incoming mail. They hurry to the mail clerk’s office and frantically dig for it as another supervisor comes over to help.

  In a few minutes, the FBI men find the file. Paper-clipped to the top is a one-page communiqué from the Washington, D.C., field office—and it’s a shocker. According to the communiqué, Oswald had written to the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., about a trip he had made to Mexico City at the end of September, during which he had a conversation with “Comrade Kostine” at the Soviet embassy there. Hosty had read something about the Mexico City trip in October but was forbidden to question Oswald about it for fear of tipping off Oswald, and presumably the Soviets, to FBI surveillance methods in Mexico.589

  This was a bombshell—if Lee Harvey Oswald was in contact with the Soviet government, he may have been some type of agent for them, which would mean a potentially explosive international situation. Had they been negligent and allowed a Soviet agent to assassinate the president? The press would come down very hard on the bureau, and J. Edgar Hoover would come down even harder on everyone in the bureau who had any responsibility with respect to Oswald.

  Hosty takes the file to the special agent-in-charge, Gordon Shanklin. Hosty sits down while Shanklin calls Alan Belmont in Washington and advises him that a suspect named Lee Harvey Oswald is under arrest for the murder of Officer Tippit, and that police are questioning Oswald and have his handgun. Hosty hands him the Oswald file. Shanklin glances over the communiqué regarding Oswald’s contacts with the Soviet embassy, then, with no visible reaction, says, “Alan, I’ve got Jim Hosty here. He’s the agent who was working our file on Oswald. He’s got the file here with him now.”

  Over the next few minutes, Hosty assists Shanklin by leafing through the Oswald file, locating pertinent information, and handing it to Shanklin as he talks with Belmont at headquarters.

  “Oswald is the subject of an Internal Security-R-Cuba case,” Shanklin tells Belmont. “The file shows that Oswald works at the Texas School Book Depository where the rifle and shells were found. The file also shows that three years ago Oswald left the U.S. and went to Russia, where he tried to renounce his American citizenship. He returned to the U.S. on June 13, 1962, and brought with him a Russian bride whom he married in Russia.

  “Our agents have interviewed him twice since his return,” Shanklin continues, “in an attempt to determine why he went to Russia and whether he was given an assignment by the Russians. He was completely uncooperative. He said he came back because he wanted to; denied being given an assignment; and said that why he went to Russia was his own business.

  “He has since lived in Fort Worth, Dallas, New Orleans, and is currently back in Dallas. He was arrested in New Orleans in August 1963 on charges of creating a disturbance by passing out leaflets on the street which were published by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He drinks, has a violent temper, and has beaten his wife, who has recently had a baby.”

  “Do the files show whether Oswald has ever made a threat against the president or any public official?” Belmont asks.

  “No,” Shanklin says. “The agents who have interviewed him have the impression he is a mental case. He withdraws within himself when being questioned.”

  “Have you given this file information to the Secret Service?” Belmont asks.

  “No, not yet,” Shanklin replies.

  “Well, get this information to the Secret Service,” Belmont commands, “and arrange to have the agents who have questioned Oswald to sit in on the interrogations. They might be helpful to the police.”

  Shanklin puts his hand over the phone, and tells Hosty, “Belmont wants you to get down to the police department and take part in the interrogation of Oswald. Cooperate fully with the police and give them any information we have on Oswald. Get going. Now.”

  Hosty’s heart starts beating wildly as he heads out the door for City Hall.590

  2:17 p.m.

  The third-floor hallway at police headquarters resembles Grand Central Station when Captain Fritz and Detectives Richard Sims and Elmer Boyd return to the homicide office. The first order of business is to have some officers get a search warrant and go out to Ruth Paine’s residence at 2515 West Fifth Street in Irving, the address on Oswald’s employment card at the Book Depository. Lee Oswald, the employee who Fritz was told wasn’t present at a roll call of employees, supposedly lived there. But before Fritz starts to round up the officers, Lieutenant T. L. Baker tells him that the man who shot Tippit is in the small interrogation room. The homicide captain enters the room and learns from Detectives Stovall and Rose that the man’s name is Lee Oswald, the prime suspect in Kennedy’s murder. He immediately dispatches Rose, Stovall, and a third detective, J. P. Adamcik, to go to the Paine residence and rendezvous there with three Dallas deputy sheriffs to conduct a search of the residence. (The presence of the Dallas County deputy sheriffs was needed because although the city of Irving was in Dallas County, it was outside the jurisdiction of the Dallas city police.) He then has Oswald brought into his room to be interrogated.591

  It’s pretty clear to the officers in Homicide and Robbery that the man arrested for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit is most likely responsible for the assassination of the president of the United States.

  2:18 p.m.

  With the casket safely aboard Air Force One, Ken O’Donnell hurries forward to ask General McHugh, the ranking air force officer on board, to tell the pilot to take off immediately. But McHugh advises O’Donnell shortly thereafter that President Johnson had ordered the pilot to delay taking off until he was sworn in.592

  Meanwhile, Jackie Kennedy wants to be by herself for a moment. She doesn’t want to leave the coffin but knows that the private presidential cabin that she and Jack had last shared was adjacent to the tail compartment, where the coffin lay. With feelings of nostalgia sweeping over her, she thought it proper that she go there to compose herself. Moving quietly down the dim, narrow corridor, she enters the cabin and proceeds to the bedroom. When she turns the latch and opens the door, she sees Lyndon Johnson, reclining across the bed, dictating to his secretary, Marie Fehmer, who sat in a desk chair. Mrs. Kennedy stops dead. The new president scurries to his feet and hurries past her out the bedroom door, his secretary close behind. Jackie stares after them.593*

  Everyone settles back in the stale air of Air Force One to await the arrival of Judge Hughes. O’Donnell keeps looking out the window, still fearing the sudden arrival of a squadron of howling police cars and an apoplectic medical examiner.594

/>   Lady Bird Johnson reenters the presidential cabin by herself to try to offer whatever comfort she can to Jackie, but Jackie is beyond comfort. Seeing that the always exquisitely dressed Jackie had blood on her dress and her right glove was soaked in blood, she asks Jackie if she can get someone in there to help her change. “Oh, no,” Jackie says. “Perhaps later…but not right now,” then tells Mrs. Johnson, “What if I had not been there?…I’m so glad I was there.”595

  2:20 p.m.

  Detectives Elmer Boyd and Richard Sims move Oswald across the hall, from the small interview room to room 317, the Homicide and Robbery office, and then into Captain Fritz’s office, a cozy, nine-and-a-half-by-fourteen-foot room, surrounded by waist-high windows looking out onto the outer office. Venetian blinds offered Captain Fritz privacy when needed. As Oswald settles into a chair beside the captain’s desk, Boyd asks him how he bruised his eye.

  “Well, I struck an officer and the officer struck me back, which he should have done,” Oswald replies.596

  2:25 p.m.

  Captain Fritz enters his office and strolls around behind his desk.* Oswald, handcuffed behind his back, tries to look comfortable in the straight-back wooden chair adjacent to the homicide captain’s desk. Detectives Sims and Boyd stand guard nearby. They know that Oswald is about to face a grueling interrogation. One, the other, or both, would be present at every subsequent interrogation of Oswald.597†

  John William Fritz has been a Dallas cop since 1921 and chief of the Homicide and Robbery Bureau since its inception in 1934. He regards it as his own private and independent fiefdom. Fritz’s Homicide and Robbery Bureau, consisting of two lieutenants and twenty detectives below him, is the top unit of the department and even has its own sartorial signature, the “Will Fritz” cowboy hat, always a Stetson. The hat designated one as a member of the elite homicide unit, since the only people in the Dallas Police Department who were allowed to wear those types of hats were members of homicide. If you purchased a hat like that but were not in homicide, you were told to get rid of it. And if an on-duty detective in Fritz’s unit happened to be caught without his Stetson on, even on a very hot Texas summer day, it meant three days’ suspension without pay. Three detectives in Fritz’s unit worked on each investigation. Each team of detectives had a senior officer and a rookie, even though the rookie may have been on the force for many years. Each homicide detective carried two guns.598

  Because of Fritz’s sober, and many feel intimidating demeanor, and because he has headed the most important and powerful bureau on the force for over three decades, most officers respect and fear him more than Chief Curry. Fritz was born in Texas, grew up near Roswell, New Mexico, and was a cowhand and mule trader before he started walking a beat in the downtown area of Dallas known as “Little Mexico.” He was involved in the hunt for the famed desperados of the early 1930s, Bonnie and Clyde, and won a shootout in an attic with Dagger Bill Pruitt, a robber responsible for several ugly murders, when Pruitt surrendered. Divorced, Fritz has lived alone for years in a hotel room (the White Plaza) located across the street from police headquarters. He has a daughter and some grandchildren, but no one knows much else about his private life, if he has any. His only topic of conversation is whatever case is at hand, and he sometimes works two or three days around the clock to sew up a case. You’d never know his nickname was “Will” because everyone called him Captain Fritz.599

  Fritz is what one subordinate calls “a straight-laced perfect gentleman” who never uses improper language, is always 100 percent truthful and straightforward, and isn’t the least bit political. He has above-average intelligence, understands people very well, seems to be able to know when people are not being truthful with him, and is able to analyze personalities quickly.600 In particular, Fritz has a phenomenal memory for the details of cases he’s worked on over the years, and he’s quick to pick up on the contradictions in a suspect’s story. If a suspect can’t tell his story the same way a second or third time, or a tenth time, Fritz will catch him because he knows exactly what the suspect said the first time.601

  His style of interrogation is quiet and soothing, a disarming approach for even the most cunning of criminals. His reputation in law enforcement is impeccable and his record of confessions is the best in the Southwest. His men often relate how Fritz even got a confession over the telephone once. An Ohio sheriff had picked up a Texas fugitive wanted for murder. When Fritz was informed, he called the sheriff and asked if the man had confessed. The sheriff told him, “No,” then asked Fritz if he wanted to talk to him. Fritz said, “Sure.” When the fugitive got on the line, Fritz made small talk, found out they knew someone in common, then told him, “Kind of a bad thing you done here.”

  “I didn’t kill him,” the prisoner snapped back.

  “You don’t strike me as the type that does this every day,” Fritz said softly. “Is this the first time you ever killed anybody?”

  “Yes, sir, first time” the man answered, without thinking.602

  Captain Fritz is considered to be the finest interrogator on the Dallas Police Force. This time he faces his ultimate challenge. After asking Oswald his “full” name and Oswald replies, “Lee Harvey Oswald,” Fritz begins, as he always does, with casual questions, asking Oswald about where he was from, his background and education, service in the Marines, and so on.* His grandfather-like manner almost compels people to talk with him, and in that regard, this young suspect is no different.

  “Where do you work?” Fritz asks, getting into the present.

  “Texas School Book Depository,” Oswald says without hesitation.

  “How’d you get the job?” Fritz asks.

  “A lady that I know recommended me for the job,” Oswald replies. “I got the job through her.” Fritz asks about the “Hidell” name found in his wallet, and Oswald says that it was a name he “picked up in New Orleans.”603

  Fritz asks Oswald if he lives in Irving.

  “No,” Oswald replies. “I’ve got a room in Oak Cliff.”

  “I thought you lived in Irving?” Fritz asks, a little confused. Oswald says, no, he lives at 1026 Beckley. Although he doesn’t know whether the address is North or South Beckley, Fritz and his detectives can tell from Oswald’s description of the area that it’s North Beckley.

  “Who lives in Irving?” Fritz asks.

  “My wife is staying out there with friends,” Oswald says.604 Fritz steps out into the outer office and instructs Lieutenant Cunningham of the Forgery Bureau, along with Detectives Billy Senkel and Walter Potts, to go out to 1026 North Beckley and search Oswald’s rented room.605 The homicide commander then gathers Lieutenants James A. Bohart and Ted P. Wells and Detective T. L. Baker around him.

  “We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Fritz tells them. “Who’s working Officer Tippit’s killing?”

  “Leavelle and Graves,” Baker answers.

  “Fine, let them stay on that,” Fritz says. “Everybody else will work on the president’s killing.”606 Fritz returns to his office and Oswald.

  2:30 p.m.

  As federal district judge Sarah Hughes, a kindly faced woman of sixty-seven, climbs aboard Air Force One, someone hands her a three-by-five-inch card on which Johnson’s secretary has typed out the text of the oath of office. Only a few minutes after Barefoot Sanders, the U.S. attorney in Dallas, whose office was just a floor below hers, had left a message for her, she had returned to her office. Her old friend Lyndon Johnson wanted her immediately at Love Field. She knew what that meant. Judge Hughes goes on into the stateroom of the presidential cabin and embraces the president, Mrs. Johnson, and several fellow Texans.

  “We’ll get as many people in here as possible,” Johnson says, sending Jack Valenti, Rufus Youngblood, Emory Roberts, and Lem Johns to round up witnesses. “If anybody wants to join in the swearing-in ceremony, I would be happy and proud to have you.”

  When O’Donnell comes up from the aft compartment where the casket is stowed, he finds the group around the presiden
t sweltering in the increasingly unpleasant air of the small stateroom, a room that can accommodate eight to ten people seated. UPI reporter Merriman Smith, one of two pool reporters on the plane, the other being Newsweek’s Charles Roberts, wedges himself inside the door, and for some reason begins counting. There are twenty-seven people in the room. It turns out that Johnson is waiting for Mrs. Kennedy. “She said she wanted to be here when I take the oath,” he says. “Why don’t you see what’s keeping her?”

  O’Donnell locates her nearby in the dressing room of the presidential cabin, combing her hair. He tactfully explains that she doesn’t need to take part in the ceremony if she doesn’t feel up to it.

  “I think I ought to,” she says. “In the light of history, it would be better if I were there.”