The Day Kennedy Was Shot (2 page)

I returned to work on
The Day Kennedy Was Shot.
In February 1964, the word was out that I was working on such a book. Robert Kennedy, at a party, met Robert Bernstein and Joseph Fox of Random House and asked bluntly why they would want to publish a book about the assassination written by me.
^*

At a luncheon, Bennett Cerf, the President of Random House, was distressed to find that he was sharing a table with Jacqueline Kennedy who begged him, sobbing, not to publish my book. I met Richard Cardinal Cushing and, in chatting, he said that the Kennedys did not want him to talk to me. George Thomas, the President's valet, shook his head sadly and said he was not allowed to discuss the President with me. I was standing in a long corridor listening to doors slam.

When I continued my work, Mr. Cerf became unnerved by a phone call from Mrs. Kennedy. Again she wept. Again she begged him not to publish my book. He told her that there would be many books about the assassination, and that it would not be in the interest of historical accuracy to sponsor one author to the exclusion of all others. He then addressed a letter to Robert Kennedy, stating in part:

“I can understand that you would want to cooperate completely with only one author, but I urge you not to cut other writers off completely. . . .”

A movie magazine appeared with a headline: “The Man Who Made Mrs. Kennedy Cry.” I was the man.

A letter arrived from Mrs. John F. Kennedy. It was on mourning border letterhead written in her script: “I cannot bear to think of seeing—and seeing advertised—a book with that name and subject and that my children might see it or someone might mention it to them.” She feared never-ending conflicting books about that day in Dallas, she said. “So I hired William Manchester—to protect President Kennedy and the truth.” He would interrogate all who could contribute knowledge of the assassination. “If I decide the book should never be published, then Mr. Manchester will be reimbursed for his time . . .” In the next breath, she supposed that she had no right to suppress history.

All the people were asked “not to discuss those days with anyone else—and they have all kept the faith.” It did not occur
to her that, if all the sources had been shut to her husband, he could not have written
While England Slept
and
Profiles in Courage.

I wrote a flattering reply to Mrs. Kennedy and ended by saying that, with doors opened or closed, I would continue to research this book. Her reply was a flash of lightning: “None of the people connected with November 22nd will speak to anyone but Mr. Manchester . . . The Manchester book will be published with no censorship from myself or from anyone else . . .” The legal threats, the denouncements, the befouling of that man's work were all ahead of her. The Kennedys, in effect, were trying to copyright the assassination.

The reader will find ninety-two sources listed in the back of this book. I found hundreds of doors still open.

The Kennedys tried to sue their author. Alterations were made in the work.
The New York Times
quoted Robert Kennedy: “Maybe we ought to take a chance on Jim Bishop.” It was too late for that.

This book was not stopped, nor even slowed. The prime source for all the years to come is
Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy
, volumes 1 through 26. It required two years to read and annotate the 10,400,000 words but within the maze of repetition and contradiction, there is a mass of solid evidence which, if used as a foundation, will help any author to build a book of fascinating credibility without rancor, bias, or censorship.

The personal interviews are numerous and they embrace some people who are still friendly with the Kennedys. The most unusual occurred when Judge Joe Brown of Dallas County, with pipe in hand, took me to the fifth floor of the Dallas Police Department jail. I was introduced, as I recall, as a relative from Florida. The judge was so popular with the jailers that we got inside Lee Harvey Oswald's cell and were given a running account of all that happened to him when he was there. The first
interviews granted by President and Mrs. Johnson occurred in May 1968 when I was invited to the White House.

An anonymous fan in Dallas sent me a copy of the Zapruder film of the assassination. Who or why, I do not know. I used it for study and, knowing that the original belongs to
Life
magazine, burned my copy. I consulted the books of Mark Lane and R. B. Denson and Josiah Thompson and dozens of others, including the friendly superficialities of Salinger, Evelyn Lincoln, and Maude Shaw, but for incontrovertible fact, I absorbed
The Truth About the Assassination
by Charles Roberts.

This book is as accurate as I can write it. If, anywhere in it, I have given someone eyes of the wrong hue, or if I have in any sentence uttered a wrong phrase or sentence, there is no malice intended—not even toward Lee Harvey Oswald. As it stands, this book comes as close to re-creating every minute of that day of November 22, 1963, as unremitting work on my part will permit.

Jim Bishop

Hallandale, Fla.

* * *

Throughout the book, all times given are Central Standard,

The morning light was weak and somber, seeping in diffused grays across the north Texas plain, walking along Route 80 from Marshall to Big Sandy to Edgewood, not pausing, not hurrying, through Mesquite and between the granite headstones of downtown Dallas to Arlington and Fort Worth, inexorably scouring the night from Ranger and Abilene, walking westward always westward, bringing to focal life the clustered communities, the all-night lunchrooms, the laced highways with ribboned loops, jogging trucks, flat farms with tepees of corn shucks, the quiet, shallow streams swimming to bottomland, the pin oaks huddled in hummocks hanging on to old leaves, the land smelling spongy and good in the warm wind and a mist that matched its gray with the walking dawn.

The clouds were low, kneading themselves into changing figures as they swirled in slate against the red clay below and the sandwich of electric lights between. It was a day that would be much rainier, or much brighter, a capricious time when the glimmering sky flowed on a well-muscled wind, and then, an hour or two later, might be sawed into shafts of sunlight.

At the Continental Trailways terminal a big bus slowed, headlights glowing saffron along the shiny pavement of Commerce Street, and the brakes sighed as the vehicle inched into the terminal, on time. Some passengers slept. A few, sleepless, squinted drowsily at the tall brown-brick Hotel Texas diagonally across the street. As the bus inched into the terminal, the hotel disappeared and the driver said: “Fort Worth, Fort Worth. Fifteen minutes.” Time for an egg sandwich and a mug of coffee;
time for a morning paper; time to return to the uneasy sleep of the traveler.

Time.

The elderly lady stared at the ceiling. She had lived in the Hotel Texas a long time. For Helen Ganss, this room on the eighth floor was home. Yesterday there had been much excitement. Liston Slack, the manager, had been conferring for days—maybe weeks—with men who wore sunglasses and everybody on the eighth floor had been moved out. The whole L-shaped corridor had been emptied of guests. All except Mrs. Ganss. She hadn't been shrill about it, but she was an old widow and the men in the sunglasses had been perfect gentlemen. They had thought it over and had told Mr. Slack: “Okay.”

The President of the United States was down the hall in the corner suite, 850, but Mrs. Ganss wondered how he could possibly sleep. All night long she had heard the march of feet up and down that green rug with the big flowers, and now, in daylight, the feet had voices. Sleep was impossible. Some feet walked. Some ran. The voices ranged from a loud call the length of the corridor to sibilant whispers outside her door. Sadly, there was nothing exciting about the ceiling. Mrs. Ganss stared at it because a lady of years and frailty has so few options.

The noise in the corridor grew by solitary decibels. One of the three hotel elevators was reserved for presidential traffic and waited on the eighth floor. On the opposite side, Rear Admiral Dr. George Burkley, the President's physician, was up and had phoned for breakfast. He is a short, gray man of considerable reserve, and he looked out the window and then peeked down the hall toward Suite 850. The Secret Service men nodded good morning. The doctor knew that everything was all right.

George Thomas, a chubby valet, came down the corridor with an arm full of clothing. As he was admitted to Suite 850, a Secret Service man picked up a phone near the fire hose and said: “The President is awake.” Thomas walked through a small foyer,
shifted some Texas newspapers from one hand to the other, and tapped lightly on the door. Inside, there was a moment of silence, and President John F. Kennedy muttered, “Okay.”

The word had meaning which only the President and his valet would appreciate. In the White House, when Mrs. Kennedy shared her husband's bedroom, a light tap by Thomas would elicit a small cough as response. The tap and cough were designed not to disturb Mrs. Kennedy's slumber. The word “Okay” would signify that Mrs. Kennedy had slept in another room.

Thomas opened the bedroom door, deposited the clothing on the back of a chair, dropped the newspapers on the bed, and exchanged greetings with the tousle-haired sleeper who was turning the sheets back from the left—and window side—of a big double bed. The President sat up, swung his long slender limbs over to the floor, and picked up the packet of newspapers. Mr. Thomas was already in the bathroom, mixing the water and drawing a bath.

On the mezzanine floor, Master Sergeant Joseph Giordano completed the work of screwing the Seal of the President of the United States to the lectern as Secret Service men, stationed around the big room with its long rows of breakfast tables, watched him. He took another Presidential Seal downstairs to the parking lot across the street. Mr. Kennedy would make two speeches this morning. The formal one would be at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast around 9:30. These people, Mr. Kennedy had learned, were largely Republicans. The Democrats of Fort Worth had protested that the workingmen had not been invited. So the President had agreed to meet them in the parking lot before the breakfast.

The handsome General Ted Clifton, military aide to the President, rapped on the door of 804. The man who answered was The Bagman. “You packed?” Clifton said. The man said he was. Behind The Bagman stood Cecil Stoughton, the White House photographer. He, too, had plenty of gear to pack, and
he knew that he had to keep several cameras ready with film of varying speeds. The Bagman, Ira Gearhart, was important. He carried the small suitcase with the safe dial. It was his job never to be more than a few seconds from the side of the President, because inside The Bag was the electronic apparatus with which Mr. Kennedy could call, in code, for a nuclear strike.

It was assumed by all knowledgeable persons in the White House, and the Pentagon, that The Bag would never he used. Still, in the event that the Continental Army Command tracked flights of “birds” coming in across the top of the world and over the DEW line, a decision would have to be made at once. The Bagman was never far from Mr. Kennedy. The function of the man was to remember the combination to the dial; the function of the President was to order one of several types of retaliatory attacks.

In the hotel was a “White House switchboard.” This was usually manned by the military. It, too, moved in the wake of the President. It provided instantaneous communication between Mr. Kennedy and Washington. Coded information that the President had awakened was already in Washington. At Carswell Air Force Base, Colonel James Swindal, commander of
Air Force One
, had called in five minutes ago that the craft had been inspected, tested, and was ready.

On the seventh floor, a teletype machine chattered and the daily information report began to come in from the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA, with its finger on sensitive pulses around the world, was giving the President a morning rundown on the political climate of the world. General Godfrey McHugh, the only American officer of rank with a French accent, signed a receipt for it and walked up to the eighth floor, to be confronted by a Secret Service agent who blocked his path at the head of the stairs until the general was recognized. Then he went on to Suite 850, to be studied momentarily by another man with a key in his hand.

McHugh would wait until summoned, then give the report to the Commander-in-Chief. The general's strength was his weakness. He was a perfectionist in all his work. The general even maintained a record of the precise minute that the report came off the machine, and he would duly note the moment it left his hands for Mr. Kennedy's.

Two Secret Service agents were at Fort Worth Police Headquarters examining two limousines. The cars had been rented for the Kennedys and the Secret Service for the four-mile drive from the Hotel Texas to Carswell Air Force Base. Everything, including ballrooms, parking lots, bedrooms, bathrooms, parade routes, stairwells, lobbies, kitchens, cooks, waiters, telephones, local personnel, from food to forks, had to be “sanitized” by the Secret Service.

Three weeks prior to this visit, Manager Liston Slack was surprised to learn that the Secret Service declined use of the Will Rogers Suite on the thirteenth floor. It would be more difficult to “protect,” the agents had said. So Kennedy was now in a smaller suite in a corner of the eighth floor, and the Will Rogers Suite was being used by Vice-President and Mrs. Lyndon Baines Johnson. The President's quarters cost $106 per day, but the management would not send a bill. Even though normal life at the hotel had been cruelly upset, Liston Slack would not send charges to the government.

The measure of Fort Worth's excitement was in the lobby and the parking lot. The first was jammed with men wearing fawn-colored cowboy hats; in the lot, five hundred men and women stood waiting in the misty rain, even though the President was not expected for more than an hour. A half dozen mounted sheriff's deputies patrolled their horses in and out of the growing crowd, herding them toward the lectern.