The Kennedy Half-Century (5 page)

The human tragedy was gripping, but the assassination’s political implications were far graver. In this dangerous moment, America was in the throes of a major constitutional crisis. The bullet that had shattered Kennedy’s skull had also scrambled the U.S. chain of command. “Officials at the Pentagon were calling the White House switchboard at the Dallas-Sheraton Hotel asking who was now in charge. An officer grabbed the phone and assured the Pentagon that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and the Joint Chiefs of Staff ‘are now the President.’ ”
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Moreover, in the confusion of the moment, LBJ had gotten separated from Warrant Officer Ira Gearhart, the man who carried the “football” containing the ciphers needed to launch a nuclear strike. In 1963 the football was “a locked metal suitcase jammed with thirty pounds of codes and equipment” that allowed the president to initiate atomic war instantly. If November 22 had been a Soviet plot, or if the Communists had decided to capitalize on the disarray following the assassination, the United States would have been at a deadly disadvantage.
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Cecil Stoughton, JFK’s official photographer, snapped the historic photograph of LBJ taking the oath in the crowded airplane stateroom. “He was the only photographer onboard Air Force One, swiftly reloading to black-and-white
film, then struck with horror as the shutter jammed. After much jiggling, he obtained 20 shots of the swearing-in ceremony, [most of them] carefully cropped to cut out the bloodstains still showing on Jackie Kennedy’s skirt and stockings.” Johnson raised his right hand and placed his left hand on a Catholic missal that O’Brien had mistaken for a Bible. “I do solemnly swear,” he said, repeating after Judge Hughes, “that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.” Air Force One climbed into the sky a few moments later.
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While Air Force One had been grounded in Dallas, Officer J. D. Tippit was on patrol in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. At 12:45, 12:48, and 12:55 P.M., an announcement came over police channel 1 for all units to be on the lookout for a “white male, approximately thirty, slender build, height five foot ten inches, weight one hundred sixty-five pounds.”
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As he cruised past the intersection of Tenth Street and Patton Avenue, Tippit spotted a man who generally fitted the description. The patrolman pulled his car to the curb and exchanged a few words with the man through the passenger’s side window. Tippit then climbed out of his car and started toward the sidewalk. A split second later, gunshots sounded and Officer Tippit fell dead, his body riddled with bullets. While the conclusion is not universally accepted—nothing much would ever be about the events of this day—eyewitnesses identified the shooter as Lee Harvey Oswald.
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Johnny Brewer, the acting manager of a Hardy’s shoe store, saw Oswald nervously loitering outside of his business on Jefferson Boulevard. The former Marine kept his back to the street and peered anxiously over his shoulder as police sirens screamed in the background. Brewer remembered, “His hair was sort of messed up and [it] looked like he had been running, and he looked scared.” Brewer watched as Oswald made the short walk to the Texas Theatre, which was showing a double feature about the ultimate form of violence, war.
Cry of Battle
, starring Van Heflin and James MacArthur, told the story of two Americans “caught in the wilds of the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II”;
War Is Hell
focused on the Korean conflict and a glory-seeking sergeant who refused to tell his men that there had been a cease-fire. The commotion of the police sirens prodded Julia Postal, the theater’s ticket taker, to walk out to the curb. While she was distracted, Oswald ducked behind her into the theater. Brewer asked Postal if the man he had just seen going inside had purchased a ticket. “No, by golly, he didn’t,” she replied. At Postal’s behest, Brewer and the concessionaire, Butch Burroughs, secured the exits while she telephoned police.
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At 1:45 P.M., a voice crackled over the Dallas police radio: “Have information a suspect just went in the Texas Theatre on West Jefferson.” Every cop in the area immediately converged on the movie house. This was more than just a routine homicide case—one of their own had been gunned down. Officers M. N. “Nick” McDonald, Ray Hawkins, Thomas Hutson, and C. T. Walker entered the theater through the rear exits. “Put your hands up and don’t make a move,” Hutson demanded. “I’m not the one,” Brewer replied tensely. “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.” “Is he still there?” asked Hutson. “Yes, I just seen him.” Brewer led the officers into the theater and pointed at a man sitting near the doors to the lobby. Nick McDonald cautiously advanced up the left center aisle. In order to keep the suspect calm, he questioned a few of the other people in the theater. “Get on your feet,” he snapped as he reached Oswald’s row. The suspect stood up and raised his hands; the officer moved in to frisk him for weapons. “Well, it’s all over now,” Oswald announced before unexpectedly punching McDonald in the face. A mad scramble ensued. “He’s got a gun!” someone shouted. As several officers piled on top of Oswald, McDonald heard the chilling sound of a clicking gun hammer. Detective Bob Carroll managed to wrest the weapon from Oswald’s hand. “Don’t hit me anymore. I am not resisting arrest!” Oswald screamed. “I want to complain of police brutality!”
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By this time, word had spread that a suspect in the president’s slaying had been cornered; an angry, jeering crowd had gathered outside the theater. As the doors burst open, a freelance photographer, Jim MacCammon, snapped a picture that has become one of the memorable images of the assassination weekend. It shows a visibly agitated Oswald being dragged from the theater in handcuffs, flanked by Officer McDonald and Detective Paul Bentley. During the scuffle inside the theater, Bentley punched Oswald in the forehead with his Masonic ring. The blow left a nasty wound, which is visible in subsequent photographs of Oswald.
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When asked about it by reporters later at police headquarters, Oswald huffed, “A policeman hit me.”

Captain Will Fritz, chief of Dallas police’s homicide bureau, returned to headquarters at 2:15 P.M. after investigating the whereabouts of a missing Book Depository employee. Fritz told Sergeant Gerald Hill to “get a search warrant, go to an address on Fifth Street in Irving, and pickup a man named Lee Oswald.” When Hill asked why, Fritz said, “Well, he was employed down at the … Depository and he [was not] present for a roll call of employees.” “Captain, we will save you a trip,” replied Hill. “There he sits.”
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When word leaked that the police had nabbed a possible suspect in the Kennedy murder, hundreds of journalists crammed into the narrow hallways and small offices of Dallas police headquarters. Security was loose. People
without press credentials roamed freely through a main hallway. Captain Fritz actually invited Lonnie Hudkins, a reporter for the
Houston Post
, to attend one of Oswald’s interrogation sessions. Hudkins asked Oswald, “ ‘Why did you kill Officer Tippit?’ And he threw the question right back at me and said, ‘Someone get killed? Policeman get killed?’ And at that time he had this little smirk on him and I wanted to hit him, but I didn’t. And all of a sudden it dawned on me that he wasn’t sweating; not a drop of sweat on him. He was cooler than all of the people around him—Secret Service, police, FBI, district attorney …
everybody
was in that office.”
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Surprisingly, authorities acquiesced to reporters’ requests to make Oswald available for what was then called a “showing.” Although told they were not allowed to ask questions of the suspect, reporters did so after Oswald started talking to them. When one reporter asked if he had been in the Depository at the time of the shooting, Oswald said, “Naturally, if I work in that building, yes, sir.” “Did you shoot the president?” asked another reporter. Oswald answered, “No. They’ve taken me in because of the fact that I lived in the Soviet Union. I’m just a patsy.”
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Jim Lehrer was one of the reporters crammed into police headquarters, standing outside a door waiting for news. When the door opened, the Secret Service agent with whom he had had the conversation about the bubbletop at Love Field that Friday morning emerged. “He comes over to me and says, ‘Oh, Jim, if I just hadn’t taken the bubbletop down.’ Of course I’m thinking to myself, ‘Shoot, if I just hadn’t asked the question.’ ”
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Oswald was allowed to talk to a large press contingent in a crowded room late on Friday. When asked if he had assassinated the president, the suspect said, “No, I have not been charged with that. In fact, nobody has said that to me yet. The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall asked me that question.” “You
have
been charged,” insisted a reporter, incorrectly. Oswald looked confused. “Sir?” he asked. “You
have
been charged,” the reporter said a second time.
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The police broke up the session before Oswald could respond.
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It is doubtful that Oswald noticed a man in the back of the room wearing sunglasses. But some Dallas police probably knew who he was and would not have been surprised to see him there. Jack Ruby usually showed up when something big was going on. Some officers had even been to Ruby’s strip club
on Commerce Street, which featured attractive performers with names like Tammi True (the “Teacher Turned Stripper”), Kathy Kay, and Joy Dale. Ruby treated cops well, wanting to ensure that he never crossed the legal “decency line,” and he was constantly “promoting some inane product, chasing fire trucks, pushing himself into public displays or passing out his Carousel Club calling cards at the fights, in the bars, or on downtown streets.” On this particular historic night in Dallas, Ruby would later insist, all he could think about was Oswald’s smirk.
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Lyndon Johnson Held a much different kind of press conference when he landed at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, D.C., at approximately 5:58 P.M. EST. With his presidency barely five hours old, Johnson stood with his wife, Lady Bird, in front of a clutch of microphones and offered brief remarks that had been drafted for him during the flight: “This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me, it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs. Kennedy and her family bear. I will do my best. That is all I can do. I ask for your help—and God’s.”
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Johnson was sincere, but his Southern drawl and unimpressive rhetoric probably caused many at home to say or think, “He’s no John F. Kennedy”
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Professor James Robertson, a nationally renowned Civil War historian, was at home in northern Virginia glued to his TV screen when he heard the phone ring. “My wife came in, her eyes as big as two cue balls, and she said, ‘It’s the White House.’ ” The First Lady needed Robertson’s help, said the caller. She had already begun planning her husband’s funeral and wanted the White House to look the same way it had during Lincoln’s funeral. Could he come to the executive mansion right away? Robertson said he could. In the meantime, he instructed, someone should gather as much black bunting as possible. Robertson then drove straight to the Library of Congress where he and a colleague, armed with flashlights, explored the bowels of the library until they found two newspapers—
Harper’s Weekly
and
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
—that featured “woodcuts of the Lincoln coffin in the East Room.” Next, Robertson made the quick trip to the White House and was waved in through the northwest gate. “It was driving rain, which seemed appropriate,” Robertson recalls, “And there was a massive crowd just standing in the rain in Lafayette Square, staring at the White House seemingly helpless of what to do and where to go.”
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Security escorted him to the president’s office. “Quite frankly that’s when it all got to me. It was very touching to see the two white sofas and the rocking chair. All of the decorations, the murals and bric-a-brac were still up as if the president would be back.”
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He spread the newspapers out on the
floor and began to discuss the details of the funeral with the president’s staff. Robertson was then taken to the East Room and was stunned to see that a group of carpenters had already been assembled. They were awaiting his instructions amid a sea of black bunting, more than Robertson had ever seen in his life. In addition, Lincoln’s catafalque—the wooden platform that had held the sixteenth president’s coffin—had been retrieved from a subterranean storage room in the U.S. Capitol.
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Robertson and his team worked through the night to prepare for the arrival of the thirty-fifth president’s body. Unstated in this hurricane’s eye of activity was the cool, shrewd decision by an anguished First Lady to link her husband to America’s most beloved chief executive.
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She wanted JFK’s death to mean something, and civil rights, not just assassination, would connect the Lincoln and Kennedy legacies.

The assassination of a president in the nuclear age came with an especially dark underbelly. Without public notice, those in military authority had to consider the possibility of attack by a hostile power, as well as the need for a massive, instant response that would have killed tens of millions. “At the Pentagon the military machinery stood at global readiness. On the news of the assassination and suspecting a coup, the director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had immediately warned all of the nine great combat commands of the United States, which girdle the world, to hold themselves in readiness for action. One of them, on its own initiative, [elevated] its men to Defense Condition One, or combat alert. Within half an hour the command was called to order and restored to normal readiness. In Pennsylvania, state troopers sped over the roads to throw a guard around the farm of Dwight D. Eisenhower, lest assassination be planned for him, too.”
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