The Kennedy Half-Century (114 page)

85
. Robert Dallek,
Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 142. Other Kennedy loyalists doubted Lincoln’s story, including close aide Ted Sorensen. For example, in a personal interview with me, Sorensen said he was unaware of any such plan. However, Jackie Kennedy, in tape-recorded conversations with historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger in the spring of 1964, insisted that both JFK and RFK were completely opposed to LBJ as Kennedy’s potential successor, and they planned to back someone else to stop Johnson in 1968. No doubt Johnson, who had superb political antennae, was aware of their hostility to his ambitions. See Jacqueline Kennedy,
Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy
(New York: Hyperion, 2011), 277–78.

86
. Kennedy,
Historic Conversations
, 278.

87
. In the latest installment of his award-winning series on LBJ, historian Robert Caro reveals that the editors of LIFE magazine were meeting to decide the fate of a muckraking piece on Johnson’s questionable business dealings in Texas when news of Kennedy’s death came over the wires. See Robert Caro,
The Passage of Power
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 308–9.

88
. See Blaine,
Kennedy Detail
, 176, 322, and his “U.S. Secret Service Employee’s Monthly Activity Report,” November 1963, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland. The report shows that Blaine worked 109 overtime hours the month Kennedy was killed.

89
. “Report of the United States Secret Service on the Assassination of President Kennedy,” C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 43, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

90
. For example, Secret Service agents produced 30,820 “protection hours” in August 1964 compared to 21,446 the previous August. “Comparative Analysis: August—Protection Hours, U.S. Secret Service,” C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 43, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. The Treasury Department spent time reviewing security procedures during overseas presidential
trips and “the advance detection of people who might [pose a threat] to the president or the vice president.” At a press conference held on September 29, 1964, Secretary of the Treasury C. Douglas Dillon announced the completion of a “great many” security improvements. “There has been a great deal more advance preparations of visits to different cities,” he said, “buildings have been surveyed, routes have been surveyed; we have used in this process the help of other government enforcement agencies, largely Treasury agencies but also the FBI …” See “President’s Committee on Warren Report Holds First Meeting,” September 29, 1964, C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 42, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

91
. While no one knows for sure how Lee Oswald learned of the motorcade route, one of his fellow boarders at the Roberts house told the press—forty years after the assassination—that Oswald saw the route on an evening news show a few days before the president’s visit. Unless Oswald was part of a well-informed, high-level assassination plot, one assumes he first realized via the local news or from co-workers that Kennedy would be passing right next to his place of employment.

92
. “SAIC Behn—White House Detail, Statement on Releasing the Exact Route of Presidential Motorcades,” and “Statement on General Procedure When Surveying Individual Buildings along Motorcade Route,” December 12, 1963, C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 42, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. Today, it is accepted practice for the Secret Service to insist that all windows in buildings surrounding a presidential appearance be either closed or covered by agents or police.

93
. Gerald S. Blaine to James J. Rowley, “Final Survey Report,” December 4, 1963, JFK countercoup website,
http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2012/12/the-tampa-survey-report.html
 [accessed January 8, 2013]. Blaine explained to me why he finally decided after fifty years to donate this document and others to the National Archives: “[It’s] because some of the conspiracy theories indicated that we had a problem in Tampa by an alleged three-man hit team [and that] the president knew about it. This was totally false. The report states that there were no unusual incidents. Tampa went very smoothly and both threat subjects were isolated. One, a young man with psychiatric problems [Wayne Gainey], was placed under the custody of his parents and a local agent had the home under surveillance. The second threat case individual [John Warrington] was in the Tampa jail for making a death threat to the mayor.” E-mail from Gerald Blaine, January 9, 2013. During a 1978 interview with the HSCA, one of Blaine’s colleagues, Agent Robert Jamison, was presented with documents from November 18, 1963, that showed that the Secret Service was worried about “a mobile, unidentified rifleman shooting from a window of a tall building with a high powered rifle fitted with a scope.” Jamison did not recall the incident. Blaine thinks that the memos might have been in reference to Joseph Milteer, a right-wing southern segregationist who told a police informant that JFK could be shot “from an office building with a high-powered rifle … He knows he’s a marked man.” See HSCA interview with Robert J. Jamison, February 28, 1978, HSCA# 180-10074-10394,
http://www.jfklancer.com/greer/d-114.pdf
 [accessed January 10, 2013], and Summers,
Kennedy Conspiracy
, 308–9.

94
. Blaine,
Kennedy Detail
, 142–49.

95
. It is also true that Kennedy took risks from time to time that further complicated his security arrangements. For example, in March 1963 during a visit to Chicago, JFK ordered his limousine to stop at a busy downtown intersection so that he could shake hands with
well-wishers. A mob scene ensued, as motorists on a nearby highway halted their vehicles and ran across the median to get a better look at the president. See Stephan Benzkofer, “Why Kennedy Came to Town,”
Chicago Tribune
, March 17, 2013,
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-per-flash-kennedy-ohare-0317-20130317,0,670202.story
 [accessed March 18, 2013].

96
. Vince Palamara, author of
Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect the President
, does not believe that JFK ever ordered his bodyguards to stand down. “Don’t believe the 47-year-old lies told by those seeking to profit from the man they failed to protect,” Palamara writes on his blog. See “Vince Palamara’s JFK Secret Service President Kennedy Blog: The Real Truth About the Kennedy Detail,”
http://vincepalamara.blogspot.com/
 [accessed June 14, 2011].

97
. E-mail from Gerald Blaine, January 9, 2013.

98
. A few months after the assassination, Warren Leslie published a book called
Dallas Public and Private: Aspects of an American City
that blamed Kennedy’s death on Dallas’s right-wing political climate. Leslie’s critics complained about his unflattering portrayal of Dallas and pointed out that hundreds of thousands of the city’s residents had turned out to welcome the Kennedys. See Dennis Hevesi, “Warren Leslie Dies at 84; Wrote Book That Rankled Dallas,”
New York Times
, July 23, 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/24/us/24leslie.html
 [accessed July 25, 2011]. A lot of people shared Leslie’s unfavorable opinion of Dallas. The Dallas Cowboys, playing in Cleveland on November 24, were roundly booed by the crowd, and the team members were even warned by Coach Tom Landry not to be conspicuous in public or identify themselves as belonging to the team. See Marc Sessler, “Cowboys Fielded Boos, Anger After JFK’s Assassination in Dallas,” NFL.com, November 23, 2011,
http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d824651e6/article/cowboys-fielded-boos-anger-after-jfks-assassination-in-dallas?module=HP11_content_stream
 [accessed November 30, 2011].

99
. Stevenson visited Dallas on October 24, 1963.

100
. Blaine,
Kennedy Detail
, 148–49, 162; Donald Janson, “Johnson Caught in Booing Crowd as He Heads for Rally in Dallas,”
New York Times
, November 5, 1960; Richard Reeves,
President Kennedy: Profile of Power
(New York: Touchstone, 1993), 634.

101
. “United States Secret Service Lecture Outline on Protection of the President for Guidance of Special Agents Appearing Before Police Schools,” C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 42, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

102
. Robert C. Doty, “Attempt to Kill De Gaulle Fails,”
New York Times
, August 23, 1962.

103
. Marc Ambinder, “Inside the Secret Service,”
Atlantic Magazine
, March 2011,
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1969/12/inside-the-secret-service/8390/4/
 [accessed June 2, 2011]; “Kessler: Secret Service: LBJ Out of Control, Often Drunk,” YouTube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G41XRl40RL0
 [accessed December 5, 2012].

104
. The rifles and ammunition belonged to the faculty occupant of the Pavilion, who had forgotten about them. It was all innocent enough—but it might not have been under other circumstances. In presidential security, assumptions should never be made.

105
. Kessler is author of
In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes with Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2009). See also Ronald Kessler, “Threats Against Obama Prompt Secret Task Force,”
Newsmax
, July 26, 2010,
http://www.newsmax.com/RonaldKessler/Obama-threats-Secret-Service-task-force/2010/07/26/id/365617
 
[accessed June 2, 2011]; Mark Memmott, “Alleged White House Shooter Charged With Attempted Assassination,” National Public Radio, November 17, 2011,
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/11/17/142470201/alleged-white-house-shooter-charged-with-attempted-assassination?ft=1&f=1001&sc=tw&utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
 [accessed November 18, 2011]. “Man Pleads Guilty After Threatening to Kill President During DNC,” WBTV.com, October 26, 2012,
http://www.wbtv.com/story/19927214/donte-sims-guilty-threatening-kill-president-obama-twitter-dnc
 [accessed October 31, 2012].

106
. JFK’s limousine is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. The museum’s archivists told me, “After the assassination, the midnight-blue, un-armored, open convertible was radically changed. A permanent roof, bullet-proof glass, and extensive armor-plating made the car much more secure. Wearing sedate black paint in place of the distinctive blue, the car served Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon as front line transportation and remained in the White House fleet as a backup through 1977.” The White House approved the plan to refurbish Kennedy’s car “around December 12, 1963” and a “committee was formed … representing the Secret Service, Army Materials Research Center, Hess & Eisenhardt, and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.” Changes to the limousine included: a “complete re-armoring of [the] rear passenger compartment; the addition of [a] permanent non-removable top (’green house’) to accommodate transparent armor; the replacement of [the original] engine with [a] hand-built, high compression unit, providing approximately 17 percent more power; the addition of [a] second air conditioning unit in [the] trunk; the addition of certain electronic communication devices; the reinforcement of some mechanical and structural components, e.g., front wheel spindles and door hinges, to accommodate additional weight; the complete re-trimming of [the] rear compartment, eliminating damage resulting from the assassination; [and] a new paint treatment, ‘regal Presidential Blue Metallic with silver metallic flakes that glitter under bright lights and sunshine.’ ” E-mail from the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford Museum, July 3, 2012. One wonders whether LBJ and Nixon ever thought about the fact they were riding in the car in which JFK was killed. The events in this limousine made Johnson president and eventually led to Nixon’s political resurrection, after all. The November 22 automobile also served as a symbol of presidential vulnerability and mortality.

107
. See “Kennedy Limousine Redone for Johnson,”
New York Times
, June 14, 1964. It isn’t that an FBI director didn’t need or deserve a bulletproof car. Rather, it is that no one believed his boss, the president, should have the same protection.

11. INEVITABILITY: THE ASSASSINATION THAT HAD TO HAPPEN

1
. Warren Commission Report, chapter VIII, p. 446, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0235b.htm
 [accessed October 4, 2011]; Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin,
The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence
(New York: Gallery Books, 2010), 196.

2
. According to the Secret Service, “One of the purposes of the Dallas trip was to afford to as many of the people of Dallas as possible an opportunity to see the president in the limited time available. [Agent Win] Lawson was so informed and was also informed by the White House staff that the motorcade from the airport to the luncheon site (the Trade Mart)
should take approximately 45 minutes.” In other words, the president was completely vulnerable to attack for fully three-quarters of an hour, as he passed 200,000 unscreened people. “Report of the United States Secret Service on the Assassination of President Kennedy,” C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 43, Folder, “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts. JFK aide Kenny O’Donnell did not show the president a letter from a Democratic National Committeeman named Byron Skelton advising JFK to steer clear of Dallas. “Showing the letter to the president would have been a waste of his time,” O’Donnell later wrote. Kenneth P. O’Donnell, David F. Powers, and Joe McCarthy,
“Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye”: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1970), 19. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., says that Adlai Stevenson told him there was “something very ugly and frightening” about Dallas and that he (Schlesinger) should pass on his (Stevenson’s) concerns to Kennedy. Schlesinger never did; Stevenson was initially grateful for his colleague’s discretion. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 1021. Press secretary Pierre Salinger did not show JFK a letter from a Dallas woman who was worried that “something terrible” would happen to the president if he visited her city. Salinger assumed that Kennedy would have “dismissed the warning out of hand.” Pierre Salinger,
P. S.: A Memoir
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 154–55. See also Jules Witcover, “Kennedy’s Aides Got Hints of Peril in Texas,”
Los Angeles Times
, August 2, 1971.