The Day Kennedy Was Shot (36 page)

The radio came on and Channel One announced, in the flat, toneless manner of police dispatchers, that word from Parkland was that President Kennedy had just expired. A moment later Nick McDonald heard the excited voice of a stranger announcing that a policeman had been shot. When he heard the area of the crime, he said to Gregory: “That's Tippit. We're not doing any good here. Let's go up to Tenth Street.” On the way, they heard an additional report: that a suspect had been seen running into the basement of the public library at Marsalis and Jefferson. “Let's go to the library,” said McDonald. In the back of the car, the two men had a loaded shotgun. They brought it up front.

Lyndon Johnson ordered the Secret Service to get him “and my people” to the plane. He still wanted endorsement for his actions, and he ordered Rufus Youngblood to go up the hall and ask Kenneth O'Donnell if he should use
Air Force One.
The agent returned and reported that “O'Donnell says yes.”
^*
The President suggested that the party leave in unmarked cars. Whether the assassination plot was large or small, he did not want to have his wife risk her life with him, so he ordered her to ride in another vehicle. The Secret Service got in touch with Chief Curry and asked for unmarked cars. Kilduff said: “After you leave, I'll make the announcement.” Rufus Youngblood had sent Agent Lem Johns out front to requisition some automobiles. He said: “Mr. President, if we're leaving now, I wish you'd stick close to me.” Johnson was pressed between Youngblood and Kilduff. He kept glancing over their heads to his petite wife to reassure her that it was going to be all right. Agent Youngblood also had asked Johnson to keep his head below window level when he got into the car.

The President said, “Let's go,” and the party whirled out of the area at top walking speed. To keep up, Mrs. Johnson had to run between Secret Service agents. Out front, Agent Lem Johns had three unmarked cars and three drivers with rank: Police Chief Curry, Captain Lawrence, and Inspector Putnam. There is something profoundly humiliating to see a President of the United States emerge from a building in an American city running in fear. Some people, lounging at the bottom of the huge hospital building, became alert and shouted: “Tell us something!” “What the hell is going on?” “What happened?”

The party kept walking at top speed, the Secret Service agents fanning out ahead and some walking backward. The
President jumped into the back seat of Chief Curry's lead car and slouched as low as a big man can. Youngblood was beside him. Malcolm Kilduff hurried back to the emergency entrance to make arrangements for the death announcement. Congressman Thornberry jumped into the front seat beside Curry. Mrs. Johnson was shoved into the second car. Another group was in the third.

Lem Johns had not told the motorcycle cops whom they were going to escort or where. The cars started out, spinning stones behind them, and a male voice said: “Stop!” Youngblood ordered Curry not to stop. The President asked who it was. Someone said: “Congressman Albert Thomas.” “Then stop,” Johnson said, and the Congressman was literally hauled into the front seat, and Congressman Thornberry was dragged over the back of the first seat to a spot outboard of the President.

The ride amounted to flight. No one dared to trust anyone. Single-mount motorcycle policemen pulled ahead of the little caravan and asked, on Channel One, where they were going. Youngblood told the chief to tell them Love Field. The cars of the curious were parked askew all over the hospital grounds, and the three automobiles followed each other over curbstones, sidewalks, across open fields, to Harry Hines Boulevard. There the police escort started the sirens, and the President, with his face squeezed in the back seat between the arms of Thornberry and Youngblood, said: “Tell them to shut those sirens off.”

Curry did it. Still the wailing shrieks could be heard for a mile. It required two or three requests before they shut down. Then the motorcade began to run a series of “pink lights.” As they approached red ones, the phalanx of cycles had to ease out onto the intersection and wave motorists to a stop. Then the three cars, slowed for the moment, hit speed until the next “pink light.” The last part of the run was made at dangerous speed. At the airport the cars skidded through a hole in the fence and ground to a halt.

The Boeing 707 never looked so big, so friendly and so impregnable. It sat on the apron, a proud blue and white bird whose home was not Dallas, but rather the blue vault beyond the runway. There was no time for a farewell to Dallas nor a wave of gratitude for the hospitality. People behind the fence saw some dignitaries get out of three cars and they cheered. The officials hurried to the ramps and ran up into the plane without looking back.

The most forlorn figure left on the concrete was Chief Jesse Curry. Once, a long, long time ago, he had been a truck driver. Then, by study and application, he had become a policeman, a good one who was rewarded by Dallas with promotion. Now he was the chief of police, with no ambition for higher office. His sole desire was to “keep his nose clean” and retire with honor.

He sat behind the wheel, a man alone. He had worked hard and earnestly with the Secret Service, preparing for this day. All of it, including his career, died in an instant at Dealey Plaza. Someone—he didn't know who—had disgraced Dallas in the eyes of the world. It didn't matter, Curry knew, whether they found the guilty man or punished him—Dallas was going to need a goat.

Curry picked up the telephone and called Channel Two.

In any situation, there are usually two ways to turn. Lee Harvey Oswald, dogtrotting down Patton, reached the main street of Jefferson and turned right. The police turned left. They had an urgent call from Officer C. T. Walker that a suspect fitting the description of the man who had shot Patrolman Tippit was seen entering the basement of the library at Jefferson and Marsalis. It didn't require much time to surround the building. Red-blinking squad cars winked all over the thoroughfare. Shotguns and revolvers were at the ready.

Oswald kept trotting along Jefferson in the opposite direction, toward Crawford, Storey, and Cumberland. He was in no
panic. Pedestrians and car salesmen saw him run by, and he turned into a filling station, trotted into the parking lot, unzipped his white Eisenhower jacket, and tossed it under a car. Whatever description had been given of him, he was now a slightly different man. He wore a burgundy plaid shirt. To hide the gun in his belt, he pulled the tails out, came out of the filling station, and continued trotting on Jefferson.

Nick McDonald and the other policemen at the library ordered everybody in the library basement to come out with their hands up. The door opened, and a few frightened people came out. They came out slowly, including the young man in the white Eisenhower jacket—the suspect. It required only a minute or two to ascertain that this was the wrong young man. He had been spotted running at top speed into the basement of the library—true. But what had impelled him to do it was that he had just heard that President Kennedy had been shot in downtown Dallas, and his friends were in the library. He wanted to tell them. Also, he worked there.

The police scattered. A half dozen squad cars began to comb the side streets of Oak Cliff. How far can a man on foot run in three minutes? Four minutes? Five minutes? Six minutes? How far? Which way? Often a car swung into a little street and found another police group already prowling the sidewalks and alleys. C. T. Walker, who had seen the young man run into the library, was now cruising slowly up a narrow thoroughfare. Ahead he saw a man in a white shirt and long sleeves walking behind a low fence. Walker, who had a newspaper reporter in the car with him, could only see the man from the thighs up. He placed his revolver on his lap and approached slowly.

When he was within thirty feet of the man, Walker stopped the car. White Shirt kept approaching. Walker's nerves were taut. He fingered the revolver and said: “What's your name?” The man looked at the police officer and bent down behind the fence. Walker swung his revolver out the window. The man
slowly raised up, with a small dog in his arms. “What did you say?” he asked.

In a radio shop on Jefferson, the loudspeaker was turned up loud and some shoppers stopped to listen. On NBC, Robert MacNeil in Dallas was speaking to Bill McGee in New York: “Last rites of the Roman Catholic Church have been administered to President Kennedy,” he said. “This does not necessarily mean that his condition is fatal. Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson walked into the hospital where the President is being treated. Mrs. Johnson said that her husband is all right. She did not want to say anything about the President; she is in a state of shock. A blood transfusion is being prepared for President Kennedy. . . .”

The press was told, in groups outside the emergency room, that a conference had been called. The White House chief of records, Mr. Wayne Hawks, asked them to go to a nursing classroom on the ground floor of an adjacent wing. Kilduff would make an announcement. “What announcement?” the reporters demanded. “Is he badly hurt?” “Is he dead?” “We have deadlines.” “If I leave this spot, I lose the only telephone.”

No one noticed the hospital flag at half-staff. Kilduff came out, tough and businesslike, but inwardly unstrung. He strode across empty lots and the journalists followed like disenchanted apostles. In the doorway, a nurse was sobbing. The assistant press secretary was looking for classrooms 101 and 102. Tom Wicker of
The New York Times
was loafing in the rear of the group when he heard the radio in the limousine which had been used by the Vice-President. “The President of the United States is dead,” the voice said. “I repeat—it has just been announced that the President of the United States is dead.”

It was untrue. It had not been announced. The death story had started when a reporter insisted that the two priests had said that Kennedy had died. Father Huber said Mr. Kennedy had
been “unconscious” when the last rites of the church had been administered. Still, to Wicker, instinct counted for something. The announcement lacked authority, and yet it carried the same stinging reality as those loud cracking sounds in Dealey Plaza. Wicker hurried a little and caught up to Hugh Sidey, of
Time
magazine. “Hugh,” he said, puffing, “the President is dead. Just announced on the radio. I don't know who announced it but it sounded official to me.”

Sidey paused. He looked at Wicker and studied the ground under his feet. They went on. Something which “sounds official” meets none of the requirements of journalism. The press did not know the story. The nearest anyone had come to it was Smith's UPI phrase, “wounded, perhaps fatally . . .” In Washington each man had “sources” through which he might check a supposition. Seth Kantor was the only one with connections in Dallas and he had no more information than the others. All of them were first-rate reporters, men accustomed to the respect of the White House, men who not only recorded the news but who often tried to analyze it, shading the story a little this way or that, depending upon their inner beliefs and confidential opinions from their “sources.”

They filed into the nurses' classroom, with its desk and chalkboard, shouting for the announcement. They wanted it now. Some were demanding telephones. Jack Gertz of American Telephone and Telegraph Company was installing instruments as fast as he could. A few of the writers interpreted this as bad news. Why would they require special installations unless they were going to be stationed at this hospital for some time? And why would that be necessary unless President Kennedy was dying—or dead?

Kilduff walked from the back of the room to the front and stood behind a clean greenish desk with the blackboard behind him. The reporters sat at desks or lounged against the walls. The folded sheaves of copy paper, the pencils and pens were
ready. The assistant press secretary appeared to be flustered. His eyes were red. On his cheeks there was a hint of tears or sweat. Before him he had the sheet of paper with the precisely worded announcement.

He was going to say: “Well, this is really the first press conference on a road trip I have ever had to hold.” What he heard himself say was: “Excuse me, let me catch my breath.” He was rolling an unlighted cigarette in one hand. The faces confronting him were familiar to him; some were his friends. They waited patiently now. Some were afraid that Kilduff was going to faint. There was an uneasiness in the room. General Chester V. Clifton, the President's handsome military aide, took a silent stance near “Mac.” Flashbulbs were going off; a camera crew was trying to plug in some “frezzy” lights. Kilduff lifted the piece of paper and spoke mechanically: “President John F. Kennedy died at approximately 1
P.M.
Central Standard Time today here in Dallas. He died of a gunshot in the brain.” A reporter roared: “Oh, God!” Some scrambled for corridors and telephones. One said: “Give us the details, Mac.” Kilduff began to breathe heavily. “I don't have any other information,” he said.

A cameraman glanced at his watch. The time was 1:33
P.M.
A few of the writers did not move from the desks. They had just acquired the dazed, stunned expression which was spreading outward from Dallas. Good writers do not permit a story, not matter how heartbreaking, to touch them. Some of these men were re-creating the days of repartee with the President, the barb of Irish wit, the lucidity of his thoughts, the short era of youth which had permeated the White House with laughter, sweeping out the ghosts of solemn men of affairs—the Boston-accented words when the President said: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.”

This was a time for a clear, unsentimental head. Few of the writers could muster one. Any one of them could have thought of a dozen things he had postponed saying to President Kennedy,
and time had run out. This morning there was nothing but time. Some of them, to keep the trip on the front pages, had to dig for the Yarborough intraparty fight. Until then, the journey through Texas had been small-town political huckstering on the fundamental level, praising each city, promising it more federal funds for more projects, endorsing its local Democrats, waving the flag of local patriotism, and closing with the hackneyed You-and-I-will-march-forward-together.