Reclaiming History (344 page)

^*
Kellerman is the only one in the car who heard this remark. In 1964 he testified that he spoke often with the president during the three years he served him, and would not have mistaken the presidents’s Boston accent (2 H 75). But it’s unlikely the president
could
have spoken after the bullet penetrated his throat.

^*
Back at Love Field, where Air Force One pilot Colonel James B. Swindal is listening to the radio chatter of the Secret Service agents in the motorcade (the plane’s communication center was linked with the White House Communications Agency’s temporary signal board in the Sheraton Dallas Hotel, which in turn was linked to the Secret Service radio frequency), he hears two loud shouts over the radio frequency around 12:30 that he recognizes as the voice of Roy Kellerman. Then he hears a third sharp cry from Kellerman: “
Dagger
cover
Volunteer
,” the code names, respectively, for Rufus Youngblood, the chief Secret Service agent in LBJ’s limousine, and Vice President Johnson. But the radio immediately becomes a “babel of screeching voices. Then it fell silent.” (TerHorst and Albertazzie,
Flying White House
, pp.199, 210–211)

^*
Mrs. Kennedy would later have no recollection of crawling on the trunk of the car. Looking at still frames from the Zapruder film while working with author William Manchester, she said they brought nothing back to her. It was as though she were looking at photographs of another woman. (Manchester,
Death of a President
, p.161 footnote)

^*
Parkland Memorial Hospital, a ten-story county hospital about four miles from Dealey Plaza, was the largest and best hospital in Dallas County, a distinction it holds to this very day. Taking its name from the wooded parkland it sat on, the hospital opened on May 19, 1894. The present Parkland Hospital, on a new site, was dedicated on October 3, 1954.

^*
Later estimates of the speed vary. Two of the motorcycle escorts gave estimates of the speed on Stemmons Freeway ranging from 80 to 90 mph (Savage,
JFK First Day Evidence
, p.364; Sneed,
No More Silence
, pp.129, 156). Dallas police radio recordings (NAS-CBA DPD tapes, C2, 12:34 p.m.) indicate approximately four minutes were required to cover the four-mile ride to Parkland, which computes to an average speed of 60 mph over the entire route, which accounts for the slowing down of the limousine once it got off the Stemmons Freeway onto Industrial and then Harry Hines Boulevard.

†Not all pass the Trade Mart. The first press bus in the motorcade, unaware the president has been shot, proceeds to the Trade Mart, where the bus passengers soon learn he’s been shot and is at Parkland Hospital (Semple,
Four Days in November
, pp.591–592).

^*
Jackson redeemed himself two days later when he took a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

^*
Harkness testified that Euins told him, “It was under the ledge,” which referred to the sixth floor (6 H313). Photographs of the building show a decorative ledge separating the sixth and seventh floors. Harkness further testified that “it was my error in a hasty count of the floors” (6 H 313) that led to his broadcast reference to the “fifth floor.” Harkness’s error is understandable in light of the fact that in 1963 the Depository’s first-floor windows were covered with decorative masonry. Persons unfamiliar with the building could easily mistake the second floor for the first, third for the second, and so on—making the sixth floor appear as if it were the fifth floor. This is apparently what Harkness did during these initial confusing moments.

^*
Later that afternoon, Euins told the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department in a sworn and signed statement that the shooter “was a white man” (CE 367, 16 H 963).

†The gesture, witnessed by a spectator, became the basis for an early report that Johnson had been wounded or suffered a heart attack (Associated Press wire copy, November 22, 1963, 1:18 p.m.; Manchester,
Death of a President
, p.169).

^*
There was one red rose from the bouquet that did not make it into the hospital. Stavis Ellis, one of the Dallas police cyclists who had led the close-tailing presidential limousine to Parkland is among the large crowd of people who have swarmed around the emergency area in back of the hospital. After President Kennedy’s body and Connally have been removed from the limousine he can’t resist the temptation to look inside the car. He sees several puddles of blood on the rear seat and floorboard. Right in the middle of one of the puddles lay a beautiful red rose. Years later he would recall, “I never forgot that. I can still see it, that red rose in that blood.” (Sneed,
No More Silence
, p.147)

^*
Inside the emergency area at Parkland were four emergency rooms, Trauma Rooms One, Two, Three, and Four. They were located on what was called the ground floor, not the first floor, at Parkland Hospital. Kennedy was immediately taken to Trauma Room One. (3 H 358–359, WCT Dr. Charles James Carrico) Above the ground floor were floors one through ten. The operating rooms were on the second floor. Though Governor Connally, who was taken to Trauma Room Two, was eventually brought up to an operating room on the second floor, Kennedy never left Trauma Room One. The entire emergency area at Parkland has since been reconstructed, and the Trauma Room One that Kennedy was brought into is no longer in existence. (Telephone interview of representative of Parkland’s Corporate Communication section by author on January 21, 2004)

†Photographs show this second-floor window to be closed at the time of the shooting. Brewer no doubt meant the sixth-floor sniper’s nest window, which would have been at the southeast corner,
second floor down from the roof
.

^*
At the time, CBS did not have the capability of putting a commentator on camera immediately. “It took nearly twenty minutes to set up the cameras so Cronkite’s voice could be joined by his face, and because of that experience, CBS would later install a ‘flash studio’ to enable visual, as well as audio, bulletins to be transmitted immediately.” (Gates,
Air Time
, p.3)

^*
After eliciting from Carrico and other Parkland doctors that the president was wearing a back brace, nowhere did Warren Commission counsel go on to ask the doctors just what they did with the famous brace, although one could assume they would have removed it at some point. One doctor testified he saw it “lying loose” (6 H 66, WCT Dr. Gene Coleman Akin), though another said he “pushed up the brace” to feel the president’s femoral pulse (3 H 368, WCT Dr. Malcolm O. Perry), suggesting it wasn’t removed. In less-than-clear testimony, Secret Service agent William Greer suggested that the brace was among the items of the president’s belongings he was given in two shopping bags by a Parkland nurse when the body was ready for removal (2 H 125), but this wouldn’t tell us when, if at all, it was removed by the Parkland doctors
during
their effort to save his life. Almost thirty years later, Dr. Marion T. “Pepper” Jenkins, one of the Parkland doctors, said the president “must have had really severe back pain judging by the size of the back brace
we cut off
. [Again, not when, though the natural assumption would be at the beginning of the effort to save the president. But Dr. Paul Peters, who arrived at least five minutes after the president entered Trauma Room One, said the brace was still on, and he only refers to his removing “an elastic bandage wrapped around his pelvis,” but says nothing about removing the back brace (6 H 70).] He was tightly laced into this brace with wide Ace bandages making figure-of-eight loops around his trunk and thighs” (Breo, “JFK’s Death, Part II,” p.2805). A Parkland doctor described it as a “corset-type” brace with “stays…and buckles” (3 H 359, WCT Dr. Charles James Carrico).
Dr. John Lattimer, who studied the assassination for years, researched the entire brace issue and concluded it may have been responsible for Kennedy’s death. He writes that Kennedy had “bound himself firmly in a rather wide corset, with metal stays and a stiff plastic pad over the sacral area, which was tightly laced to his body. The corset was then bound even more firmly to his torso and hips by a six-inch-wide knitted elastic bandage, which he had wrapped in a figure eight between his legs and around his waist, over large thick pads, to encase himself tightly…He apparently adopted this type of tight binding as a consequence of the painful loosening of his joints around the sacroiliac area, probably a result of his long-continued cortisone therapy.” The result? When he and Connally were hit by the same bullet, the “corset prevented him from crumpling down out of the line of fire, as Governor Connally did. Because the president remained upright, with his head exposed, Oswald was able to draw a careful bead on the back of his head.” (Lattimer,
Kennedy and Lincoln
, p.171; Lattimer, “Additional Data on the Shooting of President Kennedy,” p.1546)
Since the first bullet that struck Kennedy passed through soft tissue and did not penetrate any organ of the body, it was the opinion of Dr. Perry, Kennedy’s chief attending surgeon, that “barring the advent of complications, this wound was tolerable, and I think he would have survived it” (3 H 372). Writer James Reston Jr. captioned his article on this issue, “That ‘Damned Girdle’: The Hidden Factor That Might Have Killed Kennedy” (
Los Angeles Times
, November 22, 2004, p.B9). If this is true, the Japanese destroyer that sunk Kennedy’s PT boat in World War II and killed two of his crewmates, only injuring Kennedy’s already fragile back when he was hurled backwards onto the deck (Leaming,
Jack Kennedy
, p.139; O’Donnell and Powers with McCarthy,
Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye
, p.48), finally claimed Kennedy as its third victim twenty years later.
If there is no certainty as to the role the president’s back brace played in his death, there is something closer to certainty that caused his death and which he himself was responsible for. As indicated earlier, President Kennedy did not want Secret Service agents riding on the steps attached to the right and left rear bumper of the presidential limousine. Gerald A. Behn, special agent in charge of the White House Secret Service detail, said that shortly after assuming his job in late 1961, President Kennedy had told him this. No fewer than five Secret Service agents gave statements to the Warren Commission that it was common knowledge among the White House detail that this was Kennedy’s desire, which he reiterated twice in the summer of 1963, once in Rome on July 2, 1963, the other time in Tampa, Florida, just four days before the assassination. Kennedy’s desire was not etched in stone, and since the Secret Service has the right to do whatever is necessary to protect the president, in Tampa, on November 18, Special Agent Donald Lawton was standing on the right rear step, Special Agent Charles Zboril on the left rear. Kennedy told Special Agent Floyd Boring, who was seated in the right front seat of the limousine, to have the two agents return to the follow-up car. When the limousine slowed through downtown Tampa about three minutes later, the two agents dismounted. (CE 1025, 18 H 805–809; “Kennedy Barred Car-Step Guards,”
New York Times
, November 24, 1964, pp.1, 33)
The likelihood is high that if Kennedy had not been opposed to Secret Service agents riding on the back of his car—the agent standing on the
right rear
step would have blocked Oswald’s sight on Kennedy’s head.

^*
Per the Warren Report, “As the President’s limousine sped toward the hospital, 12 doctors rushed to the emergency area.” The report named the twelve (four surgeons, one neurologist, four anesthesiologists, one urological surgeon, one oral surgeon, and one heart specialist), but omitted at least two doctors, Dr. Carrico and Dr. Charles Crenshaw. (WR, p.53)

^*
The medical school, so often referred to in assassination literature, is the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School located right next door to Parkland Hospital. In fact, the first floors are connected by a long corridor. The two institutions are separately owned and governed but have an extremely close relationship, Parkland being the “teaching hospital” for the medical school. In fact, many of the doctors on the Parkland staff are professors at the school, and most of the school’s graduates do their residency at Parkland.

^*
The femoral artery is the main artery of the thigh and can be felt in the pelvic area.

†The bullet wound happened to be located in the precise place where a tracheotomy is normally performed.

^*
The Parkland doctors chose type O RH-negative blood because it is safe to give to anyone, regardless of his or her type, as it causes no adverse reaction.

^*
“KKB-364” is the radio call sign of the Dallas police radio station.

^*
The city of Dallas was broken down into eighty-six police districts. Each day was broken down into three eight-hour shifts (“platoons”). Most districts only had one patrolman assigned to it, although “hot districts” (those with a higher incidence of crime) had two. The number “78” was Tippit’s radio call number because it was the police district, number 78, he was assigned to. (Eighty-six districts: “Dallas Police Department Squad Districts as of January 1, 1960,” DMA, box 7, folder 10, item 3; Telephone interview of Jim Bowles by author on March 25, 2004)

†The author of the only book on the Tippit murder case wrote that “the initials [J. D.] he was known by didn’t have any particular meaning. To everyone he was just J. D.” Tippit’s brother, Wayne, told the author that reports that his brother’s initials stood for “Jefferson Davis” were incorrect. (Myers,
With Malice
, pp.28, 588 note 20) However, at least as to the first initial, a fellow officer who worked with Tippit for a while referred to him as John (Sneed,
No More Silence
, p.463).