The Kennedy Half-Century (51 page)

And why does this debate matter so much? It is because the assassination is critical both to understanding America’s past and future paths and to the lasting legacy of John Kennedy that is the subject of this book. Concerning the first, a quiet civil war has been raging for a half century. This war has not
been fought with bullets, and it has not been a battle of economic ideologies like the chilly one that marked the standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, American culture has been engulfed in a war of words between those who have embraced the fundamental conclusion of the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman, and those who insist that a broader conspiracy lies behind the assassination.

This is no minor dispute. The commission’s backers accuse the conspiracy supporters of stirring feelings of deep cynicism in the American people and encouraging a lack of faith in those who run government with their wild accusations of complicity in Kennedy’s murder by senior political figures and civil servants. Further, say the lone gunman theory’s advocates, the widespread accusations that senior political, governmental, and military figures participated in the planning, execution, or cover-up of the assassination of President Kennedy have damaged the image of the United States around the globe, fueling anti-American sentiments by undermining the very basis of our democratic system.

The most adamant supporters of the lone gunman theory say that it is irresponsible to question the “carefully considered” conclusions of the Warren Commission report. That is certainly the establishment view, even today, in the halls of government and many media organizations, perhaps reinforced by the reaction to Oliver Stone’s everybody-did-it movie. Yet if the Warren Commission’s conclusion was so compelling and convincing, why did the man who created the commission and all but mandated the lone-gunman finding, Lyndon Johnson, himself believe until his dying day that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy? And why did the two people closest to Kennedy in his presidency, Robert F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy, privately judge their brother and husband’s death to have been the result of a larger plot?
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During a January 2013 interview in Dallas with the television commentator Charlie Rose, RFK Jr. said that his father “believed the Warren Report was a shoddy piece of craftsmanship” and gave orders for officials at the Justice Department to conduct a secret investigation of possible ties between Oswald and the CIA and Mafia. “He publicly supported the Warren Commission report,” the younger Kennedy confessed, “but privately he was dismissive of it. He was a very meticulous attorney. He had gone over reports himself. He was an expert at examining issues and searching for the truth.” Of course, the late attorney general’s private doubts about the Warren Commission report have been long documented and discussed in assassination circles for years.
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Not to be outdone, those who suspect a broader plot in the assassination see the Warren Commission itself as the cynicism maker. Among other sins, they cite a rushed inquiry pushed along by naked political motives, the failure to pursue legitimate lines of inquiry or even to interview many key witnesses,
and the desire of some members with CIA ties to hide the whole truth from the commission on subjects such as U.S. attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. Many of these critics, at great personal cost and sacrifice, have devoted large chunks of their lives to uncovering the commission’s inadequacies. They see themselves as David facing Goliath rather than Don Quixote tilting at windmills, and they have been determined to uncover the truth that has been buried by the alleged hidden perpetrators of this monstrous crime. From their perspective, the pro-commission establishment is more interested in protecting its charter members than in seeking justice for the murder of a president.

The echoes of this war are with us daily. Americans far too young to have any memory of November 22 instantly react to terms that entered the lexicon because of disputes about the assassination: grassy knoll, magic bullet, single bullet theory, conspiracy buff, and many more. More important, younger and older Americans have made their choice between the warring camps. Overwhelmingly—and consistently since the time of the assassination—people believe that Oswald did not act alone. (New polling, discussed later in the book, underlines and expands upon the public’s choice of conspiracy.)

Perhaps, as I suggested earlier, it is mainly this: The enormity of the act of negating the decision of 69 million voters does not square with the insignificance of Lee Harvey Oswald. In addition, the silencing of Oswald so soon after the president’s murder would cause suspicion even among the most naïve. Maybe most of all, though, it was the sixth sense of many Americans that they were being sold a bill of goods they did not want to buy from the usual group of elite suspects. The United States government has so often covered up the truth and politicians have so frequently lied to the citizenry that there is every reason to imagine the Kennedy story is much bigger than the official line suggests. The moral mendacity in prosecuting the Vietnam War, the sordid tale of Watergate crimes, and the thousand other scandals and schemes since 1963 have only confirmed the widespread public belief in a conspiracy to kill JFK.

Public support does not mean the conspiracy theorists are correct. Nor does the supposed superior knowledge of establishment leaders give them a monopoly on truth about the assassination. Both sides are blinded by contempt for one another and sure that the other group’s motives are impure. In fact, impartial observers can find some legitimacy in the viewpoints of both camps, as we have tried to show in this chapter. Whether one embraces a conspiracy theory or prefers the lone gunman explanation, there is simply no question that—at the very least—negligence and deception among some officials contributed to the death of a president and the incomplete public explanation of his demise that followed. This is no minor matter, but some have treated it like a typographical error, to be overlooked without full accountability.

The never-ending controversy about who shot JFK, and why, is central to the
thesis of this book. November 22 has kept John F. Kennedy on the front pages and on television and movie screens for fifty years. Every anniversary has been marked by TV specials, magazine spreads, and remembrances of various kinds. The assassination has become iconic, from the Zapruder film and Jackie’s pink suit to the sixth floor window and Dealey Plaza. The continuing mystery surrounding the event, and the otherworldly cast of characters connected to it, has transfixed generations not alive at the time. It is a puzzle palace, and no James Bond novel ever had so many twists, turns, and subplots. There is also no epilogue that neatly ties all the strands together. The experts, the investigators, and the witnesses disagree with one another about critical details and fundamental conclusions. The enduring mystery of the assassination is irresistible for historians, journalists, Hollywood producers, and average citizens alike.
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Just as we are reading books and watching television specials questioning vital aspects of the Lincoln assassination almost 150 years after the event, so, too, are Americans likely to relive the Kennedy assassination centuries from now.
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But this is no mere murder mystery for the millions still alive who personally and vividly recall four dreadful days in November 1963 as though they occurred last week. The essential connection between the long-ago tragedy and the fifty years of Kennedy dominance of American culture is simple: profound human emotion. The World War II generation came of age with television and a made-for-TV family named the Kennedys. It makes perfect sense that most Americans told pollsters in the wake of November 22 that they were grieving as though they had lost a member of their own family. In practical effect, they were. We grew up with make-believe television families such as the Cleavers, the Reeds, the Nelsons, the Ricardos, and the Taylors, and the Kennedys appeared to be the real-world match.
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We felt that we knew this atypical young family of four, and we spoke easily of them as though they were cousins—Jack, Jackie, Caroline, and John-John. No other White House occupants had ever before been in the living rooms of most households on a daily basis, and not since Teddy Roosevelt had any First Family been so photogenic.

Then, horribly, abruptly, with no warnings and no good-byes, the Kennedy presidency and its TV show were canceled, never to return except in permanent, hard-to-watch reruns. The camera-friendly youth and vigor—the picture of what a vibrant postwar United States wished to project to the world—vanished in an instant, replaced by a politically able but dowdy old-style couple who were a throwback to an era that seemed obsolete. Few were able to quickly dispel the deep sadness that shook them to their foundations as they witnessed the youngest elected president become the youngest to die; the elegant First Lady—the Princess Diana or Kate of her day—have her husband gruesomely killed while sitting inches away; the White House children they found delightful but who would now grow up without a father; the little boy who, with one salute of his
daddy’s casket, caused the whole of America to dissolve into tears. Even now, the scenes conjure up great pain for some and recur in nightmares for others. I was struck by the number of interviewees for this book who openly cried or had to pause to collect themselves as they recalled these long-ago dark days.
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Not long after the assassination, Dan Fenn, who later became the first director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, heard one of Jackie’s assistants say, “We’ll never laugh again.” Fenn corrected her, “We’ll laugh again, but we’ll never be young again.” (This quotation was mistakenly attributed to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, later a U.S. senator from New York.)
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Most Americans felt much older, and more morose, after November 22, 1963. A half century ago, the nation barely recognized depression as a serious mental disorder, and had few effective treatments for it. If we had been more advanced, though, there would have been an unprecedented number of Prozac and Xanax prescriptions written. For the first time ever, because television news was finally able to offer continuous coverage, virtually the whole nation, and much of the world, did little but watch TV, in dazed shock, day after day—the kind of communal mourning that set a precedent for the reaction to the trauma of September 11, thirty-eight years later.

Yet another emotion, that of guilt, played a part in the public’s postassassination reaction. In an election divided by religion as much as by party, millions of voters had cast their ballots against Kennedy on account of his Catholicism. Three years later, it was obvious even to the most extreme Kennedy critics that the United States had not been governed from the Vatican, as they had forebodingly projected. Others who had resented the Kennedy clan for its celebrity saw their grievances melt away as they said good-bye to a fallen leader. Almost everyone believed that a terrible injustice had been done to the presidential family, and their own families. Many citizens, even some of Kennedy’s political enemies, resolved to right the scales by remembering the man and his legacy, and forgetting about, or outright denying, their past opposition to JFK. The resulting mental gymnastics were a wonder to behold. By 1964 an academic survey found that 64 percent of Americans claimed to have voted for John Kennedy in 1960, when he actually received 49.7 percent of the vote.
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Whatever the cynics may think, in a democracy, when the people clearly want something, they usually get it. Politicians and policymakers from the White House to the local school board rushed to respond. Hundreds of schools and sites would be named for Kennedy around the world in the wake of the assassination—not to mention an aircraft carrier. There seem to be few places abroad without a Kennedy plaza or street, and almost no states or major cities have failed to dedicate some monument, avenue, or educational facility to JFK. These daily reminders of a brief presidency, a direct result of November 22, have kept the Kennedy image alive. Most other modern presidents have far fewer concrete testimonials; only Ronald Reagan comes close.
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The assassination created a wistful tale of what might have been, at least as we imagine it, and we refuse to let go. Many Americans look back to the Kennedy moment as the country’s high-water mark of world influence and domestic tranquillity. In part, this is reconstructed fantasy. The United States was more powerful right at the end of World War II than it had ever been before, or is likely to be again, and given the cauldron of racism that was steaming to a boil during the Kennedy years, it is difficult to call the domestic reality of 1961 to 1963 tranquil. Nonetheless, America was unquestionably the dominant Western nation in November 1963. After the scare of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the hopeful step represented by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, the two great powers appeared to be moving toward more tolerant coexistence. Whether it would have happened or not, John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev seemed to be approaching a kind of détente a decade before it finally arrived under Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev.

Moreover, nostalgia for Kennedy’s one thousand days in office was created by the savage developments that unfolded later in the 1960s and 1970s—widespread race riots, the draining Vietnam defeat, Nixon’s megascandals, disturbing revelations about the hidden activities of the FBI and CIA, gasoline lines, high inflation, stubborn unemployment, skyrocketing interest rates, multiple recessions, and international humiliations such as the Iran hostage crisis. We will never know how JFK would have dealt with the tests that came America’s way from 1964 to 1969, but retrospectively, to most of his countrymen, his record looked sterling by comparison to the performances of Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Perhaps simplistically, Americans tend to classify public officials as “good guys” and “bad guys.” Kennedy received one of the permanent good-guy berths, a designation impervious to revelations about JFK’s private life shenanigans, while the four subsequent chief executives went out of office far less popular than they entered it.
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