The Day Kennedy Was Shot (44 page)

One of the stewards thought: “How strange. For the first time in history, we have two Presidents aboard.” On the radio, the first officer heard an announcement from a plane still at Love Field: “This is
Air Force Two.
Our designation has been changed to SAM nine seven zero. We will depart for Washington, under present instructions, at 1514 local time.”

The “poor dumb cop” wore a tag on his big toe. Dr. Paul Moellenhoff of the Methodist Hospital took a bullet from the body and showed it to Patrolman R. A. Davenport, who guarded the dead officer. Davenport marked it and put it in his pocket. The body was about ready. Blood had been washed away from the wounds of J. D. Tippit. There was a sizeable hole in the forehead and a smaller one in the temple; one of the chest wounds was small. The other, the one which had hit a uniform button and had carried it into the chest, was big and ugly.

Dr. Moellenhoff could do no more. He looked at the nude, well-nourished male on the slab and shrugged his shoulders. The goods guys do not always win the gun battles. The solemn words “in line of duty” have never exhilarated a widow nor fed a child. The doctor covered him and called for an ambulance. “The body will be taken to Parkland Memorial for an autopsy,” he said. “Doctor Earl Rose will be waiting.” So would Mrs. Tippit.

The wellsprings of sorrow and guilt, shock and confusion, the aimless litany of repeating: “The President of the United States was shot in Dallas today” made November 22, 1963, seem to go on forever. Psychologically, the entire nation was trying to face it and admit it. But the brain teetered on the edge of truth and pulled back. In Dallas shops, clerks and customers discussing merchandise stared at each other once too often and
burst into tears. An emotional cripple named Jack Ruby, who didn't really care at all, unexpectedly phoned a boyhood friend named Alex Gruber, who now lived in Los Angeles. Ruby prattled about a dog he had promised to send Alex, a car wash business, and the assassination. The nightclub owner lapsed into uncontrollable sobs and hung up.

Nor was it less emotional in the basement of the police department. In the vast underground parking lot, policemen got into cars and couldn't remember where they were to go or what they were to do. Others, arriving, stood beside police cars talking with other officers about the assassination, as though by conversational repetition it would become understandable. Lieutenant Jack Revill returned from the Depository with three policemen. He saw FBI Special Agent James Hosty and they discussed the case with disbelief.

Hosty ran over to Revill and exclaimed: “Jack, a Communist killed President Kennedy!” Revill, a tough face under a cowboy hat, said, “What?” “Lee Oswald killed President Kennedy.” “Who is Lee Oswald?” “He is in our Communist file. We knew he was here in Dallas.” They walked into the basement elevator with other police officers, and Hosty said he knew that Oswald was “possibly capable of this.” Revill was excited. He felt that “the town died today.” He shouted invective at Hosty, and they got off the elevator at the third floor, in the midst of mass media. Revill repeated the conversation to his boss, Captain W. P. Gannaway. He was ordered to make a written report on it at once, to be drawn to the attention of Chief Curry. Hosty had no idea that the use of the words “possibly” or “probably” could, in an angry police report, hang him. He had never believed that Oswald, the friendless pedant, would be capable of violence.

The Dallas Police Department, which had cooperated fully with the Secret Service, was in no way to blame for the tragedy. It had extended itself to the limit to protect the President. Still
there was a feeling akin to guilt in the department. Men asked each other blankly: “What could we have done that we didn't do?” At 2:50
P.M.
FBI Agent James Hosty became the accidental goat.

The blame was quickly nailed down:

Captain W. P. Gannaway
Special Service Bureau
Subject: Lee Harvey Oswald
605 Elsbeth Street

Respectfully submitted
,

Jack Revill, Lieutenant

Criminal Intelligence Section

In the hysteria of the hour, it was an ideal report for taking the responsibility from the Dallas Police Department (which it didn't deserve) and tossing it into the lap of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where it didn't belong. The long and cool shadow of time shows that if the motorcade was staged again with the same personalities, the same diligence to duty and the protection of the President, and the same knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald, the President would be killed as before.

Hosty could mask his feelings, but not to himself. All great tragedies depend upon an assortment of miniscule events, each of which must be executed in an orderly manner. The chain is easily broken, as it was on the day Oswald told his wife he wanted to kill the Vice-President. She locked him in a bathroom. He pounded on the door and threatened to beat her. Within a short time, Oswald agreed to remain in the bathroom if she would give him something to read. The chain of events was broken. On the night Oswald tried to kill General Walker, the first miss with the rifle frightened him, and he ran, hiding the gun on a railroad embankment under gravel.

The FBI wasn't aware of these things. No government agency saw Lee Harvey Oswald as a danger. He was on the records of the State Department, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a Marxist defector. His disappointment in the Soviet Union was so profound that he had borrowed money from the U.S. Department of State to return to Texas—and had paid the money back, a little at a time.

On April 24th, 1963, Oswald left for New Orleans, and Special Agent Hosty transferred his authority over Oswald to the New Orleans office of the FBI. Oswald headed for Mexico on September 25, 1963 and rented a room at the YMCA. By November 1, 1963, Mrs. Paine had informed the FBI that Oswald was employed at the Texas School Depository Building and was rooming somewhere in Dallas. To any law enforcement agency,
Oswald would have been much more of a pest than a menace; much more of a petty disputant than a threat.

Captain Fritz waved Hosty into his office. The FBI man opened his commission card and displayed it to Oswald. There was no comment. Jim Hosty backed up and sat beside Bookhout. “Have you been in Russia?” Hosty said. The prisoner rested his manacled hands on the captain's desk. “Yes, I was in Russia three years.” “Did you ever write to the Russian embassy?” Oswald gave it some thought. Then he said: “Yes, I wrote.” “Have you ever been to Mexico City?” The sensitive nerve had been touched. The reaction was instantaneous. Oswald was not aware that anyone knew about his bus trip to Mexico. “No,” he said loudly.

“When were you in Mexico City?” the FBI man said. Oswald stood. He sat. He pounded his shackles on top of the desk. “I know you!” he shouted. “I know you! You're the one who accosted my wife twice!” The captain grabbed the handcuffs. “Take it easy. Sit down.” Oswald nodded venomously. “Oh, I know you.” “What do you mean, he accosted your wife?” Fritz said. The mood of high indignation began to dissipate. “Well, he threatened her.” “How?” “He practically told her she would have to go back to Russia.” This, apparently, was not the kind of accosting the captain had in mind. “He accosted her on two different occasions,” Oswald said.

The visits to the Paine house in Irving had been routine. They were “follow-up” pilgrimages, designed to learn Oswald's current status. Hosty wanted to know if Oswald was working; if so, where. The FBI was disinterested unless the man was working in a sensitive industry, such as the manufacture of bombers or missiles. The defector was fond of excusing his successive firings from jobs by blaming it on the FBI. He never worked as anything but a laborer or minor flunky. The only thing he ever learned in a job was, while working for a photocopying service, to superimpose photographs and to fake military service cards and I.D. cards.

On the visits when Oswald was not at home, Hosty sat in the living room with Marina Oswald and Ruth Paine and, notebook in hand, directed his questions in English to Mrs. Paine. Marina had glanced at Hosty's car at the curb and copied the license number. She, too, felt hostile to the FBI. In a free country, it didn't seem just to be harassed by secret police. Besides, if the agents realized how ineffectual her husband was in almost everything he attempted, they would not check on him. No one knew better than Marina that her husband was chronically unhappy no matter where he went or how hard he tried. There was reason to believe that he despised his mother; was frustrated in his desire to dominate his wife; fought the Navy Department for giving him a dishonorable discharge from the Marine Corps; despaired in his role as dollar-an-hour nonentity in the business world; was shocked that the Soviet Union had no use for him; couldn't believe that the Cuban consul in Mexico City would decline his offer to enlist as an officer in the Castro army; cringed when his wife made fun of him as a lover; became embittered when Russian expatriates gave his wife and babies gifts of garments; perhaps, subconsciously, hated the Lee Harvey Oswald he knew.

The people on the plane gravitated into two groups. The Johnson people sat forward, the Kennedys aft. The Johnsons pretended that the situation did not exist. The Kennedys—which is to say Mrs. Kennedy, O'Donnell, O'Brien, Powers, McHugh—sulked in the rear compartment as though Johnson had boorishly appropriated the President's stateroom, evicting them all. They were desirous of making the President look bad. Mrs. Kennedy, having surprised the President in
her
bedroom, sat in the tiny breakfast nook near the casket, trembling with the vibration of the tail section.

For two hours and twelve minutes, the two camps remained apart. They employed messengers to walk the corridor with
whispered wishes. The alchemy of the hours had transmuted the grief of the Kennedy group to rancor; the assassination was a deep personal loss, but it was also a fall from power. The Ins were Out; the majestic were servile; the policy makers were beholden to a new man for a plane ride; a lucky shot had killed the President, but it had also paralyzed the Cabinet and the White House guard. Men who are appointed to high offices must please the man who appoints them. When he goes, they go; or they wait for the man they held in contempt to say: “I need you more than he did.”

Mrs. Kennedy retreated from the private bedroom to the aft galley. There were only two seats in that part of the plane. She sat on one. Mr. O'Donnell sat on the other. Admiral Burkley stood, swaying with the turbulence in the deep blue sky. Lawrence O'Brien stood near the casket. To each of them, it seemed to grow in size as the trip progressed. General Godfrey McHugh stood. This morning he had had a career; this afternoon he saw sudden retirement. O'Brien, frustrated by his thoughts, tried to patch a silver handle on the casket which had been jammed against the door of the plane on the way in. The bolts hung loose. He was not handy.

The Gaelic antidote to grief is whiskey. O'Donnell stood: “I'm going to have a hell of a stiff drink,” he said. “I think you should, too.” Mrs. Kennedy said: “What will I have?” O'Donnell said he'd make her a Scotch. She thought about it. “I've never had a Scotch in my life.” O'Donnell moved on to call a steward. The forlorn face looked up at General McHugh. “Now is as good a time to start as any,” she said.

The moody passengers had listened to the subdued whine of the jets; the landscape, far below, held no checkerboard interest. Conversations began and stopped abruptly. The people turned to whiskey. In some, it loosened additional tears; in others, it shored the dam of emotions. The President supped two bowls of steaming vegetable soup. Mrs. Johnson saw the small
packages of salted crackers and, knowing that her husband was on a salt-free diet, munched them herself.

The short fat glasses of scotch and rye and bourbon jiggled their ice as
Air Force One
swept northeast. The empty glasses were replenished. As the busy stewards swept by, the word became: “Do it again, please.” It did not dull the shock and sorrow; alcohol made it bearable. Some had many drinks; many had a few; a few had none. Still, it could not heal a breach. There were two separate and distinct camps aboard because Mrs. Kennedy wished it so. At one time, she looked up at Clint Hill, “her” secret service agent, “what will happen to you, now?” she said, and burst into tears. He looked down, the law officer always in control of his emotions, and the tears came.

The Johnsons, anxious to show a smooth continuity in the transfer of government, desired the two families to appear as one. At least, the Johnsons felt, the former rapport between the two groups could be maintained. They were wrong. After the swearing in, Mrs. Kennedy did not return to the private stateroom of the First Lady. She returned to the casket, and those of the Kennedy camp who wished to sit the vigil, remained at her side.

No mean word was uttered; no gauntlet was thrown. Glancing at the bronze box, Mrs. Kennedy began to think of Abraham Lincoln. The buoyant, youthful, sophisticated John F. Kennedy became fused in the shadow of death with the weary, cavernous man who had sealed the fractures in the union with the blood of its best boys. He, too, had had his Johnson; he, too, had died on a Friday; he, too, had been sitting with his wife; he, too, had been shot in the back of the head; in death he, too, had turned over the affairs of the nation to a man who was earthy, a vindictive Southerner who was politically alienated from his area.