The pace of the clock was deliberate and unhurried, the large second hand flicking a leg like a British soldier executing a slow march. It is the most exasperating of man’s inventions because it must prevail and can never be dominated. The timepiece displays an impassive face and man moves at a pace faster than he wishes. He fights this index to events and movement and must always lose the final engagement.
It was so with the Fort Worth motorcade. Surprisingly, there were a few bands tootling music as a welcome to the President, and he waved, turning backward in the seat to grin as his thick hair lifted high over his head, but the speed began to accelerate as the O’Donnells and the Kilduffs noticed that the schedule was six minutes late.
The air was damp and uncomfortable, and, as the dwellings and curbside watchers thinned, the cavalcade turned off onto Meandering Road to the gate at Carswell Air Force Base. The guard of honor, sparkling in the sporadic sunlight, stood at present arms as the cars inched through the security checks. The commanding officers stood in array, the white laurels on their peaked caps proclaiming rank.
Mr. Kennedy turned on his youthful smile, but he was in a hurry. The post band began the solemnly punctuated “Hail to the Chief,” and everyone remained at rapt attention until the last note. There were greetings to be exchanged with generals and some wives who wanted to be presented, and there was no way to hurry the takeoff to Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy, gracious and smiling, met the ranking officers and their ladies with the poise that was always hers. The President, fingering the top button on his suit jacket, murmured to O’Brien: “This certainly has been an interesting and pleasant morning.”
The President was sure that he could board Air Force One at once, because Carswell is so security-conscious that young officers who left the base for a movie often wondered how they would get back in. When Major General Montgomery was the commanding officer, he assigned new lieutenants to live in Fort Worth and ordered them to try daily to “sneak” into his base without proper credentials.
The President and First Lady, with the accounterment of generals, began to move toward Air Force One. They almost reached it. Suddenly, a group of mechanics in coveralls burst through the lines and engulfed the party. There were yells and hurrahs and grimy hands were thrust forward. High in the flight deck of 26000, Colonel James Swindal looked down and saw the Kennedys disappear in the enthusiastic maelstrom.
Lyndon Johnson and his group hurried over to Air Force Two and boarded at once. The press, with a Pan American Clipper 707, was ready to go. No one could move until the President was ready, and Secret Service men tried to insulate the First Family against all those hands waving near their faces. But the President, pleased at the outburst, began to lend himself to it and he held both arms above those nearest to him to reach and shake a wheel of arms.
Secret Service men waved everyone else aboard, urging the passengers to hurry. Mrs. Lincoln, who had stopped the President at the elevator with her relatives’ relatives, waited to get a picture of the Kennedys with a new camera. The captains of the three aircraft received clearance to taxi. The breeze was out of the northwest and slight, and Swindal—even though his plane was traveling light—chose to taxi south and use the long runway north over Lake Worth.
The doors of the press plane closed, and the ramp was pulled away. Aboard AF-2 were thirty-two passengers, including ten Secret Service men. Of the remaining twenty-two, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson had as guests seven congressmen and Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr and Mrs. Carr. General Ted Clifton, The Bagman’s boss, was aboard, but The Bagman was manifested on Air Force One. Elizabeth Carpenter, the stout, jolly, and observant secretary to Mrs. Johnson, put on her seat belt, blew a sigh, and hoped that Dallas would behave itself.
The Kennedys inched their way toward the rear ramp of Air Force One. Military police were now trying to pry the well-wishers from the couple, but many of the workers had waited a long time for this opportunity, and they had no intention of going home tonight saying: “No, I did not shake hands with the President.”
There were thirty-six aboard Air Force One, not counting the crew. This was the powerhouse group. No matter how friendly the relationship between the people on AF-1 and AF-2, there was always an aura of condescension from the first to the second. The planes were the same model, same size, almost the same accommodations, but rank and precedence are important. The personnel on both planes shared a spirit of camaraderie, but, when opinions diverged, it was AF-1 which prevailed.
Besides the President and Mrs. Kennedy, AF-1 had Kenneth O’Donnell, Lawrence O’Brien, and David Powers, the Athos, Aramis, and Porthos of the President’s private circle. General Godfrey McHugh was aboard, proud and officious. Mary Gallagher, who was not en rapport with Mrs. Kennedy this morning, sat quietly with Mrs. Lincoln and hoped that the First Lady’s squall of displeasure would blow away with the rain.
Malcolm Kilduff, bright and tough, was in charge of the press but he rated AF-1 in case the President might wish to commune about stories in the Dallas press. Dr. George Burkley, rear admiral and physician to the President, walked up and down the aisle, a mild gray man who felt that he should be close to the President at all times, but who was often ordered to the back of the line by Kenny O’Donnell. It seemed pointless to Burkley to have a doctor at a distance from the President of the United States—of what use would he be in an emergency?—but he was also thankful that the President, other than a chronically bad back and a chronic cortisone deficiency, was a healthy animal.
Governor and Nellie Connally had to be on AF-1. So, too, did Ralph Yarborough. Roy Kellerman, the tall, wavy-haired man who was in charge of Secret Service on this trip, was also aboard, sitting at a breakfast nook in the back of the plane. So was Clint Hill, whose function was to protect the First Lady.
Four members of the press, representing all the others on the Pan American plane, were permitted aboard AF-1. The dean was Mr. Merriman Smith of United Press International, who would, if the opportunity arose, flash a story to UPI and, on leaving the only telephone in the area, yank it from its moorings.
Practically, this flight was ludicrous. Three giant jets were about to fly thirty-three miles. There had been considerable surprise among the crews when the order had come down that all the infinite care and preparation for a flight overseas would be put into operation for a small commuter run between twin cities. Automobile drivers on the expressway made the trip in thirty minutes. The commercial air companies referred to Love Field as the Dallas—Fort Worth Airport, as though both cities were one.
The situation had already created a traffic problem. No bombers were taking off from or landing at Carswell. The B52s on the hardstands stood like tired birds in pools of rain. Any aircraft en route in was ordered to remain clear or proceed to Bergstrom Air Force Base. The small private planes at Luck, Oak Grove, Plyon, Arlington, Blue Mound, Grand Prairie, Red Bird, Greater Southwest International, and White Rock had been ordered to clear the air. For weeks the big commercial companies which had flights coming into Love Field, or outbound, had been warned to cancel, postpone, or move ahead. The FAA monitors at Love Field had been told to “pick up” the three presidential planes on radar the moment they lifted off Carswell.
The soft drawling Alabaman, Colonel James Swindal, filed a flight plan asking for 5,000 feet altitude. AF-1 could make the climb in two minutes, but a jet is inefficient under 24,000 feet, and Swindal would be swinging into the Greater Dallas area before he could get higher. He could climb north to the outer perimeter, swing slowly to starboard, remaining mostly in the turbulent cloud cover, pass over Grapevine and on toward Richardson and Garland, then southeast to Mesquite, turning northeast over the Trinity River, dropping slowly as he passed the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas, then up the alley between Hines Boulevard and Lemmon Avenue to runway 31, which is close to 310 degrees on the compass.
The colonel saw his prime passengers climb the ramp, and, when the exit door light flicked off on his panel, he lit number three pod, and then the others. The first officer passed the word that Air Force One was ready. The President and Mrs. Kennedy proceeded to their private cabin, slightly aft of the big silver wing. The seat belt sign went on. Colonel Swindal watched the press plane move out, a broad, ugly, rocking thing on concrete but a flash of white swan in the sky.
Behind it, the Vice-President’s Boeing 707 whined at a slow pace as it moved to the bottom of the two-mile strip of concrete. The air began to crackle with repeated flight plans, courses, and handoffs. Dallas came in to warn two commercial jets, now twenty miles northeast of Love Field, to please hold at their respective altitudes and positions for the next fifteen minutes.
The crew of Air Force One flew the world’s most pampered airplane. The exterior, blue and white trim, had been selected by President Kennedy. The interior had been designed by him, with assistance from Mrs. Kennedy and a decorator. The paired seats in the front of the plane are turned backward because it is more conducive to safety; at the wing section there is a bulkhead with the Seal of the President of the United States. Behind it is a combination office and lounge, with a desk, a presidential telephone, a long settee, an overhead television set, deep pile rugs, an electric typewriter and, behind this, a narrow walkway on the port side of the plane. Facing the walkway is the private cabin of the President and First Lady, with twin beds, a makeup table, a desk, and flowers. Here, the current newspapers and magazines were laid out in rows for the Kennedys.
Behind the private cabin is an aft area with a breakfast nook and facing benches, a few stuffed seats against the opposite bulkhead, and a storage compartment in the tail of the aircraft. Up front, behind the flight deck, is the most elaborate communications equipment ever devised for air travel. The President may, if he chooses, speak to anyone in the world who has a telephone. Should any part of the system fail, there are “backup” facilities. At the press of a button, soft music floods the plane from ceiling loudspeakers. A motion picture can be shown. A Secret Service man may depress a button on a separate telephone system and speak to his confreres anywhere.
The plane cost the American taxpayers $6 million with fan jet engines; communications ran to $2 million; there was even an original painting of a French farmhouse over Mr. Kennedy’s bed. News came in on a teletype machine and the sheets were ripped off and placed before the Chief Executive as they were enunciated. The plane had a small device which would encode a message and decode it. The rug underfoot was blue with a taloned golden eagle and stars representing the original thirteen states.
Swindal turned his four big engines up, and concrete began to slide under the nose. He watched the press plane pass him, going the other way, and he saw it lift off into the low billowing gray over Lake Worth. Its gear was tucked in at 11:17 A.M.;AF-2 roared north one minute behind it, still in the turbine turbulence of its predecessor. Colonel Swindal waited until 11:20, completed all his last-minute checks, and poured the JP-4 to the engines. The few in the passenger area who would not sit when the stewards requested it, felt themselves hanging onto seats to keep from sliding back down the aisle.
In a moment, 26000 was airborne. Swindal asked for seven thousand feet instead of five and got it. He could have asked for anything because nothing else was permitted to fly in the area, and only three blips showed on the radar screens. He throttled down to 225 knots, and started his big lazy swing to the right. The Colonel didn’t know it, but the FAA monitors at Dallas had him on their scopes before he cleared Fort Worth.
For John F. Kennedy, landing at Dallas would complete 75,682 miles of travel in Air Force One—approximately three times around the world in one year.
Dispatcher Henslee at Dallas Police Headquarters noticed a swelling volume of traffic. He was handling Channel Two and the voices were coming in from all parts of the city to ask questions or to contact other officers. A deep voice came in calling “30.” This was Sergeant R. C. Childers’ number. “When you start receiving information from the tower on that plane,” he said, “advise 531 (radio dispatcher’s telephone extension).” Sergeant Gerald Henslee announced his agreement. “Ten four,” he said. “Will be on Channel Two.” He called Deputy Chief N. T. Fisher at the airport. “Four. Will you advise as to crowd estimate and weather condition.” Fisher was not willing to predict weather. “Ten four,” he said. “It’s not raining now and we have an estimate of a crowd of eleven hundred people.”
Officer Murphy called in from the opposite end of Dallas. “Could you send a city wrecker to the triple underpass, just west of the underpass on Elm, to clear a stalled truck from the route of the escort?” Dispatcher McDaniel knew that this was between the Texas School Book Depository building and the railroad trestle. There were three traffic lanes, but that truck would have to be hauled out. The dispatcher complied by saying, “Ten four.”
Patrolman R. B. Counts cut in to say: “I’ve got an Air Force car here that has the President’s seal and flags and he’s got to get to the Trade Mart before the President does. . . . I’ll escort him out there about code two.” Code two permits speed but caution at intersections with siren and red flashers. Murphy came back on Channel Two: “Disregard the wrecker at the triple underpass. We got a truck to push him out of here.”
Captain Glen King, an articulate officer who supervised public relations for the police department, sat in his small office. He was adding up the roster for the 8 A.M. to 4 P.M. tour of duty. The chief would be with the President. A deputy chief and fifty-four men were at Love Field. On the parade route, one hundred seventy-eight men were assigned to the critical intersections. Fifteen police motorcycles would be with the motorcade. An additional two to four men were stationed at each point where the cars would make a turn. Extra men were standing on every bridge and railroad trestle. Others waited inside tunnels and underpasses.
Detectives and off-duty patrolmen in civilian clothes were assigned to mingle with crowds and man rooftops where crowds were expected to be heavy. Sixty-three policemen surrounded the Trade Mart, and 150 more were already inside the big building. The Dallas Police Department totaled 1,100 men. Of these, 850 were now working this one tour of duty, and most of them were within the presidential area of four miles. Captain King was satisfied. The superior officers knew from experience that the visit of a VIP always brings the hotheads and a few mentally irresponsible people to the front. Dallas had seldom entertained a President of the United States, and Glen King wanted no trouble, no irate citizens, no threats to the motorcade. The department was literally breaking its back to make certain that Dallas would “come up smelling like a rose.”
There was additional assistance which Captain King did not add to his list. Off-duty firemen were impressed into service. Sheriff’s deputies were on duty. The State Police Department of Texas sent men in big, curling hats. The Texas Rangers were stationed from airport to Trade Mart. Governor Connally’s own Department of Public Safety sent its best men from Austin. Chief Jesse Curry issued a pronunciamento empowering anyone—in case of riot or disturbance on this day—to make a citizen’s arrest.
Henslee was monitoring Channel Two and Assistant Chief Batchelor came on in a worried tone. “Nine,” he said. “Have you received information that his arrival is twenty minutes late?” Henslee said: “I have not received that information.” The President was due at the Trade Mart at exactly 12:30. The Secret Service and the police had made the dry runs four or five times and it required forty-five minutes, allowing for a speed of fifteen to twenty miles per hour in the rural sections and ten to twelve in the crowded streets. Twenty minutes amounted to a great deal of time. It would stretch the travel between the Hotel Texas and the Trade Mart, a distance of thirty-three miles, to two hours and a half, including jet plane.
Batchelor was wrong. The schedule was seven minutes slow and could be improved by allowing a shorter time for official greetings at Dallas and a faster run from the triple underpass to the Trade Mart. Secret Service agents at the airport were lining up the cars for the motorcade, and chauffeurs were moving ahead or back in line as ordered. City police held a large crowd of sightseers behind the steel fence. A group of fire engines, foam trucks, an ambulance, and a jeep with a tailgate marked “Follow Me” moved out on runway 31.
The sun came out, not peeking, but staring. The temperature was 76 degrees Fahrenheit. Dallas, the narcissistic city, found itself impressed by an alien. The people not only were lining the curbs from the airport to the underpass, but a second wave, seeing the hot sun, now jammed buses and cars on the roads. Almost everybody was headed for a part of downtown Dallas. Each one, so it seemed, felt that there would be plenty of room for watching the motorcade. Cedar Springs and Main and Lemmon and Mockingbird and the roads between were lined and triple-lined with people.
The porches of homes were heavy with people who stood looking. Others leaned in shop doorways. Some sat on gravel roofs. In the skyscrapers venetian blinds were pulled up. Faces appeared in windows. Secretaries tore old scrap paper and watched it float, like confetti, toward the crowds below. The Lamar Street viaduct was choked with cars coming in from Oak Cliff, trying to find a place near Main to park. Some left their cars along the curb between the Dallas News and the railroad station, even though police citations would be tied to the windshield wipers. The city had decided, with the advent of the sun, to stage a rip-roaring hell-bent-for-election Western-style welcome. For this day, this moment, Dallas did not want to be reminded of the politics of John F. Kennedy. He was the President of the United States, and, if San Antonio gave him an “Olé!” and a big, sprawling Houston tossed its Stetson in the air, and Fort Worth waited patiently with rain on its face to roar, “Where’s Jackie?” then Dallas was about to deafen this Easterner with a roar of sound and a bear hug that would send him to the LBJ Ranch dancing with joy.
Those who could not hurry downtown turned the television sets on and left them on. In the Dallas News, E. M. Dealey, publisher, permitted the young secretaries to use his television set to watch the proceedings. In Irving, Ruth Paine hurried from the dental appointment to find Marina Oswald excited and still in her bathrobe, explaining in Russian that the President and his pretty wife had left Fort Worth but there was nothing on television at the moment because the plane had not arrived in Dallas.
In City Hall, a portable set was on and too many faces tried to watch. In shopping centers, crowds anchored before radio stores to watch the proceedings on TV sets in the windows. At Parkland Memorial Hospital, sets were turned on. Starched nurses, en route from room to room with tiny paper “cocktails” of pills and water, watched the excitement. In the rectory of Holy Trinity Church, Father Oscar Huber sat upstairs in the recreation room with Father James Thompson. Huber, the pastor, was a small, alert man with a wry Missouri humor.
The blue veins in his snowy hands were pulsing with excitement. He watched the jets lift off from Fort Worth and he said to his younger confrere: “I have never seen a president. Want to walk up to Lemmon and Reagan with me and watch him pass by?” Father Thompson did not. He would be content to watch the proceedings on TV. The little pastor sat for a moment, watching, then got up and put on his black jacket and left. He had heard that the nuns at Holy Trinity Church were escorting students up to Lemmon and Reagan, and, if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for him.
The clouds, like swirls of mud in a blue lagoon, jarred the three jet planes as they approached the glide path to Dallas. General Ted Clifton, on AF-2, could not understand the reasoning behind O’Donnell’s decision to fly rather than ride. Between clouds, the flat prairie of Texas, modified by thousands of white ranch houses, lush green golf courses, and damp river beds, came into focus and disappeared in the next cloud. The seat belt sign went on and most passengers were of the opinion that they had hardly left the ground.
Colonel Swindal’s first officer, wearing a headset, could hear Love Field repeating the warning for all aircraft to stay away: “D.V. Arriving. D.V. Arriving. D.V. Arriving.” The Distinguished Visitors, even though locked inside these flying aluminum tubes, were busy, each with his own problem. Senator Yarborough felt that he had made the peaceful move by riding with Vice-President Johnson; now it was up to the President to see that Yarborough was treated like a United States Senator at Austin tonight. That, unfortunately, could not be solved by a seat in a car. Governor Connally, a fellow Democrat, had no intention of honoring Yarborough at the party affairs this evening. Nellie Connally was more spiteful. She would not invite the Senator to the cocktail party at the Governor’s mansion, although it belonged to the people of Texas. Yarborough might surrender to persuasion, but the Connallys were going to maintain the split in the party, and the President could not persuade them to be civil. The Governor felt little enthusiasm for Kennedy.
Mrs. Lincoln, with a handful of memoranda which had been typed the previous night, was trying to steady herself as she went aft to ask the President to sign them. Chris Camp and Pamela Turnure split parts of the Austin speech and tried to type some of it before the plane reached Dallas. For a moment, Mr. Kennedy was in the main cabin, sitting at his desk, facing Texas politicians. They were boasting about the fine receptions, and the President conceded with gratitude, but kept coming back to the scurrilous attacks of the newspapers, and the congressmen reminded him that they had no more control over the press of Texas than he had in Massachusetts.
Without reading, he signed the memos Mrs. Lincoln placed on his desk, and he returned to the papers. He had a new one. It was a column published in the Dallas Times-Herald two days ago. “Why Do So Many Hate the Kennedys?” was the title. It was written by A. C. Greene. As Mr. Greene analyzed it, antipathy was felt toward all the Kennedys, the President, his wife, father, brothers, “his daughter, Caroline, and to some extent, even the little tyke, John Jr.” The President was referred to as a man whose “money still stinks.”
Mary Gallagher was in the private cabin, helping Mrs. Kennedy to get ready for the automobile ride. In a few moments she was out, sitting beside Mrs. Lincoln, who urged the young lady to join the motorcade. But Miss Gallagher, who had worked eleven years for the Kennedys, was afraid of incurring the President’s wrath twice in one day. “Remember Adlai Stevenson!” said Mrs. Lincoln. “We may run into some demonstrations.” She also thought that the President seemed to be nervous. Mary decided to take a chance and join the parade. There might be some perverse excitement.
A brilliant burst of sunshine came into the plane and President Kennedy arose from his desk and walked aft. “It looks as though our luck is holding,” he said to the congressmen. In the narrow alley between the main lounge and the aft breakfast nook, Mr. Kennedy noticed that O’Donnell was chatting with Governor Connally. The President must have known at once that Larry O’Brien was forward chatting with Yarborough. Keeping the Governor and the Senator apart on one plane was not easy.
Kennedy did not want to listen to the persuasions and evasions. He called Mr. Dealey, the publisher, a bad name and went into his cabin. He motioned Congressman Albert Thomas, the only stowaway on AF-1 (he was on AF-2’s manifest), to step inside with him. Mr. Kennedy sat with the legislator, and Kennedy, who always ate before keeping dining dates, asked a steward to bring some fruit and sugar.
Powers came in briefly to display the large-type copy of the Trade Mart speech. The Congressman, shaking his head dolefully, said: “I’d be careful what I say. Dallas is a tough town.” Kennedy did not answer. He was scanning the speech, rocking with the turbulence of the aircraft, and preparing to take care of his personal ablutions before the landing. In the speech, he was going to rock the right-wing element of Dallas and he was as adamant about it as the Connallys were about Yarborough. This equated the President with the people he criticized because, if they were stubborn and refused to see, so was he.
He detested the fanaticism he detected in himself. The rich Hunts and Richardsons and Murchisons of Texas represented the radical right—the Dealeys, too—and Mr. Kennedy saw them as implacable and hateful, preaching a dead doctrine to an ignorant people. The reactionaries saw Kennedy as a spiteful liberal who had seized the dammed-up political power of America and had opened the valves to flood the country with the venom of civil rights and who drowned all opposition with fancy phrases which painted them with decay and himself with youthful nobility.
The rich of Texas remembered Kennedy’s words with bitterness:
“I believe in an America where every family can live in a decent home in a decent neighborhood—where children can play in parks and playgrounds, not the streets of slums—where no home is unsafe or unsanitary—where a good doctor and a good hospital are neither too far away nor too expensive—and where the water is clean and the air is pure and the streets are safe at night. . . .
“Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves come to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats and that aggression would meet its own response. . . .
“I don’t think, really, in any sense, the United Nations has failed as a concept. I think occasionally we fail it.”
It was a standoff of the obdurates and the obstinate; he in Washington, they in Dallas. The affluent Texas begged for less government; Kennedy gave it more. Texas asked for lower taxes; Kennedy tried to seal the tax loopholes. Texas was narrowly nationalistic; Kennedy was a sophisticated European. They put millions of dollars into their propaganda; Kennedy nullified their work with a White House press release.
Now he had come to their land, their home. The millions of Texans who do not matter were awestruck by the presence of youth and power wrapped in one aluminum smile. The Texans who did matter sat behind their money and wondered if he had come as a friend, or if he was about to start more trouble. They backed Governor Connally, and the Governor had assured them that he had tried to postpone the visit into oblivion, but the President had insisted and, if he must come to Texas, it was better to have some control over the stops, the parades, the luncheons and dinners than to divorce oneself from the headstrong young man.
Jack Ruby was one of the millions who do not matter. The lumpy body carried the tired face across the gleaming floor of the Dallas News lobby on his way upstairs to see Toni Zoppi, the amusement editor. He noticed a classified ad clerk, Gladys Craddock, and the features hoisted themselves toward congeniality and he yelled, “Hi!” Then, en route to the elevator, they slid again toward his chin as he contemplated the phrasing of the weekend advertising he wanted for his nightclub, and the cutting words he was saving for the person who accepted the “Welcome, Mr. President” ad.
There is a warm effusion of righteousness when a little man can indict a big one. Jack Ruby, under threat of dropping his one-column two-inch ad, proposed to “dish it out” to the News advertising department for ridiculing the President of the United States. Ruby also wanted to know who Bernard Weissman was. As he waited for an elevator, it is doubtful that he heard the whine of jet aircraft.
Now he could see the first one. It was under the floe of broken clouds on final. Jack Jove stood in the glass octagonal tower and watched the Clipper coming, head on, with about 20-degree flaps, like a dragonfly trailing a dirty veil. It was over the skyscrapers of downtown Dallas, dropping steadily. The overhead speaker crackled and the first officer gave his call letters and said: “. . . on final, 31 right.” Jove, chief of FAA at Love Field, watched five of his men work the consoles. A radar man below had the plane on scopes and said: “Okay, Pan American Clipper 729.”
It was obvious to Jove that, in flight, the three presidential planes had spread farther apart. They had taken off from Carswell at two-minute intervals but radar showed that the Clipper had come in a little faster; the Vice-President’s AF-2 had swung wide to the right which gave it additional space; and Colonel Swindal had climbed to 7,000 feet to ease the moderate turbulence and had held the speed down to a minimum.
Mr. Jove liked that. A little spacing never hurt any aircraft. He was a dark, wavy-haired man with an office below the tower, but he wanted to be in the tower this time. Two weeks ago, the Air Force had sent Major Charles Nedbal to Jove to work out the entire procedure. It was a nothing flight, from nowhere to nowhere in no time, but Nedbal wanted to know where the fire trucks and ambulance would be stationed, whether they could follow the plane on an apron runway without being hit by jet blast, who would man the “Follow Me” jeep, what turns would be made, and where each of the three planes would come to rest.
He also had to know and report on departure procedures when the President had finished his Trade Mart speech; what gate; what minute of what hour; what commercial jets might be taking off or landing at or near Love Field at 2:45 P.M.; when he could have a weather projection for November 22, 1963, and what would be the three favored flight plans direct to Bergstrom Air Force Base at Austin, Texas.
Jove answered the questions. Even service trucks with fuel for airliners were to be ruled off the runways, aprons, and roads from a half hour before the flight from Fort Worth until Colonel Swindal brought his plane to the parking area at Gate 24 and called an all clear after he stopped his engines. Jove was proud of the airport. It was modern and as flat as a good billiard table. It ran over two miles between Mockingbird Lane and Bachman Lake and a mile and a half in the other direction from New Lemmon Avenue to Denton Drive.
The terminal was in the middle, between runways. There was a huge lobby, full of shops and restaurants, and a bronze statue of a Texas Ranger. There was a parking area for 1,666 automobiles, but it was not enough and there was contention between the police and the residents. Love was used by several airlines; the main ones were American, Braniff, Delta, and Eastern. Mr. Jove used his binoculars and could see mechanics on the opposite side of the field dropping work to come out on the apron.
The Clipper threaded the line down Lemmon Avenue, came in over the fence, and used a little runway before dropping with a screech of rubber to the concrete. The time was 11:29 A.M. It ran a little way down and then the skipper closed his “clams” and threw the engines into reverse. No problem. The shriek overpowered all other sound, then died to a whisper as the skipper made a left onto taxiway 14 and back up on 16. He was moving past the tower as Jack Jove picked up AF-2 coming in on final and heard his men, now divided between telling the Clipper where to park and working the Vice-President’s plane down over Lemmon Avenue.
It made an ideal landing at 11:33 and was parked before AF-1 came in at 11:39. The Johnsons and their guests had disembarked and been greeted by the Dallas mayor and council before the striking blue and white of aircraft 26000, gleaming in sunlight, came to a stop on runway 31 and watched the little “Follow Me” truck lead it to the nest. The crowd behind the turnbuckle fence was bigger than anticipated, and Channel One of the police department was busy reassigning men to the congested areas.
All of it seemed to be leisurely and jolly, but there was a surge of excitement which permeated even the jaded. This was the event, and it was a predictable one, but it carried a thrill which could not be suppressed. The crowd behind the fence was screaming and the people were jumping up and down. In the tower, Jove told himself that it was an uneventful landing, but his stomach convulsed when he thought: here is the President of the United States. The press hurried to places behind a roped area on the field. Secret Service men coming off the first plane were met by Winston Lawson, who sent some directly to the Trade Mart.
Along the airport fence was a long line of silent limousines, peopled with chauffeurs. The three monster birds stood almost together as they disgorged people, some of whom ran while others walked. Inside the rear of AF-1, the President fingered the knot of his tie and Kenny O’Donnell threaded his way toward him with good news. He whispered that Governor Connally had been impressed by the crowds and had said of Kennedy: “If he wants Yarborough at the head table, that’s where Yarborough will sit.”
Mr. Kennedy was pleased. “Terrific,” he murmured. “That makes the whole trip worthwhile.” Mrs. Kennedy, hearing the news, smiled. If it was good news for Jack it was good news for her. Down on the hot concrete, Vice-President Johnson led the state and local delegation over to AF-1. A runner rug was rolled to the ramp; Mrs. Johnson had a bouquet, and all faces turned up to the curved door of the plane. A flick of the hand from the White House advance man, Winston Lawson, and the drivers started the engines of the automobiles.
The door opened and Mrs. Kennedy, radiant in pink, stood in view. Air Force personnel at the foot of the ramp came to attention and saluted. The crowd shouted from behind the fence as she inched carefully down the thirteen steps, a gloved hand on the railing, the other holding the pink handbag, the dark face alight with appreciation. Behind her, the President stepped slowly, glancing down at Lyndon Johnson with a “What? You again?” grin. There was no smile on the face of Connally as he held his big cowboy hat in his left hand and assisted Nellie with his right.
Behind them, Agent-in-Charge Roy Kellerman preceded the congressional delegation. He had to remain close to the President and, at the same time, establish immediate contact with Lawson. Mr. Kennedy was shaking hands with the Johnsons. The press was protesting that the ropes represented too small an enclosure to see anything; television cameras, like boxy turtles, slowly followed the action; Mrs. Kennedy was presented with a bouquet of velvet-red roses; Governor Connally walked swiftly ahead of Mr. Kennedy to shake hands with the Dallas politicians; Secret Service agents moved from group to group, saying: “Please get in your car. Please get in your car.” Mrs. Connally smiled her sweetest as she accepted a bouquet.
Kennedy was given two charcoal portraits, one of himself and one of his wife, and he glanced at them with a studied esteem and gave them to Paul Landis, an agent. Congressman Henry Gonzalez, from the San Antonio area, walked around patting his chest and studying the crowd: “I haven’t got my steel vest yet.” Dignitaries began to hurry to the automobiles and sit in the wrong ones. Kellerman got to Lawson, who said: “Your program is all set. There should be no problem here.”
Police Chief Jesse Curry stood beside the lead car, calling in that there was a slight delay in starting, but it would be less than estimated. The President drew his wife’s attention to an elderly woman who sat in a wheelchair, and they paused for a moment, stooping to chat. Mr. Kennedy looked up to see the people jammed against the other side of the steel fence and he led his wife toward it, bowing and smiling. It was a friendly crowd, shouting to be seen and acknowledged, but some of the members of the press sensed hostility and a few reporters and still cameramen tried to follow the Kennedys.
Congressmen and local officials joined the President and, in a moment, he was lost to view. Roy Kellerman elbowed his way through the throng; Clint Hill was pushed away from Mrs. Kennedy. Hundreds of hands were sticking through and over the fence and it was obvious that Mr. Kennedy, far from feeling a sense of danger, was surprised and elated at the warmth of the greeting. He “walked” his hands along the fence. His wife felt that the people were friendly but that they were “pulling” her hands. Some of the writers assumed that the President was trying to show the press that he was not afraid. Vice-President and Mrs. Johnson were part of the eddy which swirled along the fence, shaking hands. Johnson, tall and solid, looked over heads to make certain that the President had not left the fence for the car.
He was now fifty feet ahead of the motorcade, and Secret Service driver William Greer, a stocky veteran who derived pleasure from driving the President, began to inch the vehicle forward so that the Kennedys would not have far to walk. The President was tiring of the handshaking; the reaching through and over the fence would sharpen the ache in his back. He could not see that, beyond the foremost fringe of people, some high school students were holding aloft unfriendly placards: “Help Kennedy Stamp Out Democracy”; “In 1964, Goldwater and Freedom”; “Yankee Go Home”; “You’re a Traitor.”
The elevator came down with the noise of an off-center disc rotating slowly. Some of the workers on the ground floor were stalling. It was almost lunchtime and they could see the people gathering all over the sunny plaza. Often, a game of dominoes proved to be exciting at lunch, but today was special. White and Negro, they took a few orders, filled them hurriedly, and prepared to finish a sandwich and coffee before the parade arrived. The elevator arrived at the ground floor and Lee Harvey Oswald got off.
He did not join the group nor seem to notice the people gathering outside the Texas School Book Depository. He scouted the order box and picked out three. The first was from Mrs. Hazel Carroll of the Reading Clinic at Southern Methodist University. It asked for a copy of Parliamentary Procedure at $1.40. The second was from M. J. Morton of the Dallas Independent School District asking for ten copies of Basic Reading Skills for High Schools, Revised, at $1.12 per copy. The third came from M. K. Baker, Junior High School, Reynosa, New Mexico, requesting one copy of Basic Reading Skills for Junior High Schools. All were published by Scott, Foresman & Company.
They were snapped onto the clipboard Oswald carried and, with the monotonous attitude of a mine mule, he went back to the elevator and started up to the sixth floor. Some of the employees went to the second floor to the little commissary to get bottles of Coke and cookies from machines. The small office force on that floor had practically quit, with the exception of a woman clerk, because the excitement of the Kennedy visit now permeated areas which had been immune to it. As Bonnie Ray Williams, Negro employee, said: “We always quit five or ten minutes before lunchtime, but today, well, all of us is so anxious to see the President—we’re quitting five or ten minutes ahead of that so that we can wash up quick and not miss anything.”
Some of the fellows played the daily game of manning the two elevators—which were back to back in the middle of the Depository—and racing each other to the main floor. Today Charlie Givens had the east elevator and Bonnie Ray had the west one. At the sixth floor, each called to his friends. Givens saw Lee Harvey Oswald on the fifth floor and he yelled: “Come on, boy,” and Lee shook his head negatively. “It’s near lunchtime,” Givens said.
The sullen clerk said: “No, sir. When you get downstairs, close the gate to the elevator.” This was the only elevator which could be called back up if both doors were closed at the ground-floor level. Charlie looked to make sure that his group was inside the car, and he could hear Bonnie Ray’s car moving down ahead of him, picking up other clerks. “Okay,” he said to Lee Harvey Oswald. “Okay.”
The two elevators completed their race to the main floor, and Givens patted his pockets and found that he had left his cigarettes in a jacket upstairs. Alone, he rode back up. When he reached the sixth floor, he saw Lee Harvey Oswald walking along the panel of windows facing Elm Street and the crowds below. There was nothing uncommon about it, except that Charlie Givens thought that, a moment ago, Lee had been on the fifth floor. It made no difference and they did not exchange greetings.
When Charlie got his cigarettes and ran back to the elevator, the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors of the Texas School Book Depository were, for a time, empty except for the presence of Oswald. The foreman, William H. Shelley, who had been busy supervising the laying of the sixth floor, was down in his small office next to Roy Truly’s eating half his lunch. It was his habit to eat part and to finish it in mid-afternoon.
Shelley had ordered the workers to move the small book cartons along the Elm Street side of the sixth floor but had left some First Grade Think and Do cartons along the back wall. These cartons were four times as large as the others. Lee Harvey Oswald now moved the big cartons diagonally across to the Elm Street side, making a wall about four and a half feet high. Smaller cartons were placed inside the “wall” so that, if a man chose, he could sit on them, recessed from the window but be able to look out. As a spyglass on the motorcade, this sixth-floor window in the east corner of the building was one of the best in Dallas.
Looking straight out, across the top of Dealey Plaza, a Kennedy enthusiast could see the motorcade approaching head on along Houston Street. Then, immediately below the window, the cars would make a left turn and run westerly, down the slope to the triple underpass, and, from the window, the happy couple in the car would veer neither to left nor right—merely grow smaller. This window was one of the rare places where a citizen could look down with a grand view of the parade on two streets, one northbound, one west.
Lunch had never been suffered with such silent speed. The men ate and hurried outside to find elevated positions on the Depository steps or on the lawn at the opposite curb for an unobstructed view. Bonnie Ray Williams thought he heard some of the fellows, like Danny Arce and Billy Lovelady and Charlie Givens and some of the other sociable “guys” say that they were going back upstairs to watch the parade.
Williams got his sandwich, and ran to the second floor and got a bottle of Dr. Pepper, then back to the elevator and up to the sixth floor. He looked around the vast barn-like floor and saw no one. It was silent. The sun sifted its beams through the rows of double windows and picked up motes of dust in the air. Bonnie Ray looked around, but none of the fellows was on the floor. He saw the everlasting cardboard cartons stacked in mounds here and there, and the cleared space where the floorworkers had knocked off for lunch, and it just seemed funny that he had beat everybody back up.
He saw the new high wall of cartons near the Elm Street windows and he walked beyond them to another set of windows. He laid the bagged lunch on the dusty windowsill and took the top from the bottle of soda. The sandwich wasn’t much. It was a piece of chicken with the bones still in it, imprisoned by two pieces of spongy bread. “Just plain old chicken on the bone,” Bonnie Ray called it. He looked out and down and saw the warm, friendly sun and the green of the plaza, and the police herding people this way and that, and the whistles blowing for cars to get moving before all traffic was closed, and couples on the grass adjusting cameras and looking up at the Depository building, and a final diesel locomotive yanking a small string of freight cars across the overpass as a policeman trudged to the top to keep unauthorized personnel off the property.
It was a good view, but Williams didn’t want to see the parade alone. Directly below him, a few order clerks watched from the fifth floor. Bonnie Ray finished the soda, and left the remains of his sandwich on the windowsill. If anyone else was in that big room with him for those ten minutes, Williams did not hear him.
All along the tawny concrete, men were running to and from vehicles in controlled panic. The President had told Kellerman that each person should have the same seat in the same numbered car as in Fort Worth, but now there were twenty-four vehicles and some occupants did not bother to count; some, finding an empty seat, tried to squeeze in with friends; others, consigned to the buses in the rear, tried to use empty cars closer to the President’s position. Lawson and his men were urging one and all to please be seated. Mr. Kennedy had broken away from the crowd at the fence, saying, “Thank you. Thank you. I’m happy to be in your city today. Thank you. Thank you. This is a real Texas welcome. . . .”
Few heard him because the crowd shouted its individual exhortations and imprecations. The congressmen were elbowing each other for preferred positions, and the Dallas mayor and council felt its lack of sympathy for Kennedy congeal when the Secret Service pointed to the seventh car in the line. The President helped Mrs. Kennedy into the big Lincoln. She sat hard on the left side of the rear seat and dropped the bouquet of roses between them. This was a hot day. The hypocrisy of politics was that the young lady had to smile while sweltering in a merciless sun.
The President, grinning at one and all from the right side of the car, assisted Mrs. Connally to the jump seat in front of his wife, and watched John Connally, still dour, unfold the seat in front of the President. Senator Yarborough was spotted, over the Kennedy shoulder, walking past the Vice-President’s car and the President caught Larry O’Brien’s eye and pointed. At once, the President’s special assistant ran along the line of cars and came abreast of the senator at the time that Special Agent-in-Charge Kellerman flagged the motorcycles in front to start. Yarborough was brought back, protesting a little, and was shoved by the back of the trousers into the Johnson car. The door slammed behind him and Yarborough dropped into the left side, next to Mrs. Johnson. O’Brien, watching the cars start out, studied the faces and seats and hopped into the first one which had space for him.
Two motorcycle policemen swung their vehicles through a hole in the fence and motioned to patrolmen to keep the people back. The two cops moved slowly at first, glancing back over their shoulders toward the pilot car. The motorcycles and that car should open a lead of at least a quarter of a mile in front of the procession. Deputy Chief G. L. Lumpkin, in the pilot car, had policemen Jack Puterbaugh, F. M. Turner, and Billy Sinkle with him. If there was going to be trouble of any kind, this was the car to raise the alarm.
None was expected, but four pairs of trained eyes would be watching the curbside crowds and the overhead windows all the way. If trouble did come, the policemen expected that it might be in the form of a crowd at a particular intersection which would break through police lines and engulf the President’s car. At worst, some fanatic might carry an insulting sign or shout a curse at the Chief Executive of the nation. Lumpkin was in touch with Chief Curry all the way, and he kept reporting monotonously everything he and his men saw.
The two motorcyclists were ordered by radio to increase their speed coming out of the airport, and Lumpkin and his men lengthened the distance between them and the rest of the motorcade. In police headquarters, it was announced that, at 11:55 A.M. the President was leaving Love Field. The word was passed by walkie-talkie radio among Secret Service men. It reached the White House switchboard at the Sheraton Hotel and was passed to Washington, D.C. Jack Jove in the tower heard it on short wave and returned to his office. Colonel Swindal heard it. The word was hammered into newspaper offices on the police radio band; it went to the radio stations, and the local television directors heard it and placed camera crews at strategic areas to pick up the glistening cars as they turned off the airport road at Mockingbird Lane. The President, for the first time, could see the huge cluster of modern buildings which comprised rich, conceited Dallas.
The main section of the motorcade was led by Chief Jesse Curry in a white car. He drove it. The radio speaker was open and the volume was turned up. The chief was never a shirker. He was a hardworking, eye-blinking martyr to his job. He wanted to stay on as chief, and he knew that he could stay just as long as he executed the will of the Dallas Citizens Council. The city fathers wanted no incidents today, and there would be none because Curry and his men had researched, planned, and rehearsed this assignment so deeply that today it seemed anticlimactic.
The chief sat with Sheriff Bill Decker, an old political fighter, Special Agent Forrest Sorrels, and Agent Winston Lawson. This was called the “lead car,” and Curry had four motorcycles in front of him to trim the curbside crowds. Three car lengths behind was the big Lincoln. Agent William Greer had the presidential standard and the American flag snapping from the foreward fenders. Beside him sat Roy Kellerman, and they listened to Lumpkin and Curry on the police channel. The Kennedys and the Connallys nodded and smiled passing the filling stations and the big Coca-Cola plant and the restaurants where lunchers poured out, wiping their mouths and waving.
Behind the Lincoln were four motorcycles, one on each side of the rear bumper. They were ordered not to pull up on the President unless he was endangered. Next was the big Secret Service car, full of men in sunglasses. Sam Kinney drove; Emory Roberts manned the communications set, which called this particular automobile Halfback. Mrs. Kennedy’s guardian, Clint Hill, stood in the forward position of the left running board, directly behind her. John Ready had the opposite position on the right. Behind them stood Bill McIntyre and Paul Landis. Glen Bennett and George Hickey occupied two-thirds of the back seat. The seat also cradled a powerful automatic rifle. It was in a better position than Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers, who occupied two jump seats. In front of their knees was a compartment holding a shotgun.
Next came a rented Lincoln convertible, occupied by the Johnsons and Yarborough. In the front seat Rufus Youngblood, the Vice-President’s agent, sat beside Hurchel Jacks of the Texas Highway Patrol, who drove. The Lincoln was followed by another Secret Service car called Varsity. Next, a Mercury with Mayor and Mrs. Earle Cabell. Behind it was the press pool car. The majority of reporters were in a bus farther back in the procession, but this one consisted of four men who, if a news story broke, would get it on the wires as a “flash.”
The President’s press representative on the trip to Texas, Malcolm Kilduff, rode in front on the right. A driver furnished by the telephone company manned the radio transmission set. Merriman Smith of United Press International sat between the driver and Kilduff, his knees hunched under his chin. In the rear seat were Robert Clark of the American Broadcasting Company, a Dallas reporter, and Jack Bell of the Associated Press. The ninth car was a Chevrolet convertible for White House motion picture photographers. It was impossible to take pictures in a position so remote from the President. Behind it were two more automobiles with photographers.
Three cars were assigned to congressmen. Number fifteen, a Mercury station wagon, was for “unplanned guests.” Behind this was a huge Continental bus for the White House staff; then a second one containing the White House press. The nineteenth car was most important: this was White House communications, the traveling radio car through which the President, in his automobile, could address himself to anyone in the world. This one was the link between Kennedy and the Sheraton military board. There was a Western Union car, with operators who could take stories from reporters and get them on the wire quickly. In addition, toward the back of the procession, there were two Chevrolets for “unexpected developments,” a local press car for newspapermen and television, and, closing the ranks, Captain Lawrence’s specially assigned police car and motorcycles.
The motorcade was spread over a half mile. Leading it was Deputy Chief Lumpkin with his “pilot car.” All drivers had been instructed to remain tuned to police Channel Two, which would be manned by the chief himself. All other police matters would be handled by Channel One. The press was displeased with its place in the parade. Some felt they could have reported a better story watching the motorcade from any of the buildings downtown. Even their wire representatives—AP, UPI, and American Broadcasting—sitting forward in a special car, were six hundred feet behind the Kennedys and could see little except the mayor of Dallas directly ahead.
The Secret Service men were not pleased because they were in a “hot” city and would have preferred to have two men ride the bumper of the President’s car with two motorcycle policemen between him and the crowds on the sidewalks. Kennedy was “wide open,” but the SS recognized him as “the boss” and he dictated his protection. Had they been able to exercise power over his decisions, the Secret Service would have forbidden the parking lot speech in Fort Worth and the fraternizing at the Love Field fence. These were explosive situations, but Kennedy had survived many of them with a happy smile and, as always, the Secret Service was made to appear overly protective, overbearing in insulating the President of the United States from his people, and unduly alarmed.
Dr. Burkley was unhappy. O’Donnell had relegated the President’s physician to the sixteenth car. It had happened before, and this time the admiral had protested. He could be of no assistance to the President if a doctor was needed quickly. He was reminded that this was a sunny day encompassing a friendly crowd. Mr. Kennedy was in reasonably good health, and no doctor would be required. In that case, Burkley felt, there was no need for a doctor to be present. Mr. O’Donnell sent Burkley back, and ordered Mrs. Lincoln back with him.
No one was pleased, Kennedy was unhappy with the Dallas newspapers; Mrs. Kennedy, dressed for cool weather, was sweltering in a pink suit; the man who sat closest to Kennedy, Governor Connally, might have exchanged places easily with Dr. Burkley and felt better for it; Chief Curry was tired of the security burden placed on him and his city; Kellerman counted the minutes until they would all start the trip to the privacy of the LBJ Ranch; even the cop on the motorcycle behind the President’s left ear, B. W. Hargis, had been on duty since 7 A.M. and didn’t look forward to an additional hour of strain. This could also be said for B. J. Martin, the cop on the other side of the rear bumper, who watched Mrs. Kennedy wave. He squinted into the sun ahead of his bike.
On that day, one man assumed an assignment without an order. This was Captain Perdue W. Lawrence, who got in his car and left Love Field before Chief Lumpkin. To Lawrence, the event suddenly appeared to be bigger, greater, more important than he had thought, and he wanted to precede the pilot car by a half mile to make certain that his sergeants and their patrolmen were holding the crowds back and blocking the cross-street traffic. The captain was a cautious and thorough policeman. He listened to Chief Curry on Channel Two. En route alone, Lawrence displayed himself to his men at the crossings so that they would be alert to their work.
Lawrence became more and more surprised the farther he proceeded toward the Trade Mart. This was no average Dallas crowd. It was a metropolitan mob. The people were numerous even in the outlying area off the airport. At Lemmon and Atwell, the captain could not believe the number of people who waited. He recalled that, at some of these remote streets, he had not assigned a policeman to shut traffic off. Now the captain saw that it was not necessary: the pedestrians were stretched solid athwart all side streets.
At the first turn off Mockingbird, Governor Connally grabbed the metal bar in front of him and raised himself up and then sat back again. He looked incredulous. Unless all the early signs were wrong, about a quarter of a million people had turned out to see Kennedy in Dallas.
It was late in the season for a cookout. The sun was radiant over the lush hills of Virginia, and the men sat in the back of the big house, around the swimming pool. The beeches had shucked all but a few leaves from their branches, the red maples hung onto an assortment of shiny copper leaves, stiff russets, and some apple yellows. A mist hung over the hills, and yet it was not a mist. It was as though blue wood smoke had gathered in the low places to hang quietly, like old nets drying in a cove. The Attorney General was in a buoyant mood. He had broken up his Organized Crime meeting and had taken two of the visitors to his home in McLean for lunch. The thin, attentive face of Robert Morgenthau, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was at his side. At Morgenthau’s side was his deputy, Silvio Mollo. The lunch, according to Mrs. Kennedy, would be creamy New England clam chowder, some crackers, and coffee. This was a Catholic Friday—even for Morgenthau.
The Attorney General was a vital wire of a man, a sort of combat Kennedy. He relished the prosecution of crooked union leaders and members of the Sicilian Mafia. The latter had grown rich in an era when America had enforced the Volstead Act, which prohibited the sale of spiritous liquor of any kind. Since the repeal of that act and the return of licensed liquor in the United States, the criminal element, still organized into “families” with assigned terrtiories, had worked their way into legitimate businesses. The Attorney General was fascinated with the notion that he could drive them out of business and into prison, or out of the country.
He was a man who dared. His experience in matters of law was not extensive, but he was enthusiastic about his new role as the righteous prosecutor battling a world of evil. Robert Kennedy was designed to play the part of David.
Someone remarked that the wives always looked bright and refreshed in the early hours. Perhaps it was the plumage, or the makeup, but they smiled and brightened a scene which, to the men, might be grim. The time was 6:55 A.M. at Honolulu, and the ladies had arrived from Washington the night before. It wasn’t often that they had an opportunity to make a trip with their busy husbands, and this one was going to Japan.
The men had been in Honolulu for two days of conferences, at the direction of the President. He had been possessed of a suspicion that American military involvement in Vietnam was beginning to stick to his fingers. Mr. Kennedy, as was the case with Mr. Eisenhower, his predecessor, would like to be out of Vietnam. Each day the military boots of the United States sank a little deeper in this Oriental rice paddy.
Mr. Kennedy had become disenchanted with the Vietnamese President, Ngo Dinh Diem, and Diem distrusted Kennedy. The American military advisers complained that supplies sent to Vietnam were being diverted, that American suggestions regarding the conduct of the war were ignored, that Diem and his “dragon lady” wife, his brother-in-law, a Catholic archbishop, his brother, a general—all of them spent more time fighting the Buddhists than in ridding their land of Vietcong terrorists and North Vietnamese soldiers.
Less than two weeks ago, President Diem and his brother had been assassinated in a military coup. The Catholic archbishop was out of the country; the “dragon lady” had fled, presumably to Italy. The situation, as far as the Americans were concerned, should have been good, but it wasn’t. There were whispered charges that President Kennedy had agreed to the assassination of Diem, that he had been aware of the palace plot and had kept the American ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, from warning Diem. True or untrue, there was an odor of American chicanery in his assassination, and world newsmen spent the better part of a week trying to piece the story together.
Kennedy had ordered five Cabinet members and his press secretary, en route to Japan for a state visit, to pause in Honolulu for conferences with Ambassador Lodge and General Paul D. Harkins, who flew east from Saigon. Pierre Salinger, the press secretary, sat in as an observer, and he felt that the Vietnamese generals who were not in control “were doing a good job.” To some of the other conferees, this was a secondary aspect of a larger problem. The United States was spending blood and treasure beyond its means in Southeast Asia. Further, it had lost the sympathy of the world.
At the conferences were Secretary of State Dean Rusk; Secretary C. Douglas Dillon of the Treasury Department; Robert McNamara of Defense; McGeorge Bundy, presidential adviser on Foreign Affairs; Luther Hodges, Secretary of Commerce; Orville Freeman, Secretary of Agriculture, and Stewart Udall, Secretary of the Interior. It is hardly likely that this much of the Cabinet, in effect, the United States government, had met in Hawaii to hear Lodge and Harkness tell how well the new regime was doing. They could appreciate that from the daily précis in the Situation Room of the White House. It is more likely that they were worried over public interest in Kennedy’s involvement—if any—in the assassinations and how best to divert attention from it. They may also have discussed how best to extricate the U.S. from Saigon; in fact, it was a probable topic and the President may have asked the military for a timetable of withdrawal.
The conferences were made important by the status and number of the conferees. The meetings had broken up last night, and Secretary McNamara and McGeorge Bundy had taken a plane back to Washington. At 6:55 A.M., the remaining Cabinet members and their wives walked out onto the strip at Hickam Airport and boarded a presidential jet for Japan.
In Tokyo, Rusk, Dillon, and the others would discuss trade agreements with their Japanese counterparts. It was a beautiful day. Pierre Salinger got aboard with his wife Nancy and remembered that a good breakfast had been promised on the plane. The press secretary had one additional assignment: he was to sound out the Japanese secretly on the possibility of John F. Kennedy’s making a state visit to Japan in 1964. The President didn’t want any of the student riots which had turned Dwight Eisenhower back from a similar visit at the halfway point.
The Japanese would have to maintain public order if they wanted Kennedy. It was Salinger’s job to find out. The door closed and the wives were thrilled to be making the trip. It would take all day, even flying with the sun, and there would be one stop at Wake Island for fuel. From the air, Oahu looked like a fresh salad in mint aspic.