Dallas lost its official mind. Two and a half hours after the event, the aura of fatalistic acceptance was shattered. The professional calm of the police department was replaced by shouting officers who elbowed their way in and out of headquarters; poorly thought-out orders were executed, amended, and sometimes revised by telephone. Chief Jesse Curry, who might have supervised the hunt for the assassin, spent time telling the widow that she should go back “and lie down.” The district attorney, Henry Wade, was trying to make certain that the crime was either his “baby” or the “baby” of U.S. Attorney Barefoot Sanders. Cops were sent out to Beckley and to Irving to search and seize, but they had no warrants for such work, and neither they nor their superiors had thought of getting them.
A police dispatcher, speaking to Captain C. E. Talbert on Channel Two at 3:01 P.M., said: “A Mr. Bill Moyers is on his way in to swear in Mr. Johnson as President and he will need an escort, but we don’t know when he is going to get here.” At Love Field, Curry was telling Mayor Earle Cabell that his police department had a suspect in the killing of Tippit and Kennedy, but neither official hurried to headquarters to serve the cause of justice.
The district attorney, the competent Henry Wade, found out that the crime was not federal. It was his “baby,” but he permitted the clerks in his office to go home. It was a Dallas County matter, as Dr. Earl Rose had insisted it was, but the authorities had only the most superficial pathological findings from the doctors to present at any criminal trial. Fritz questioned Oswald, but employed neither stenographer nor tape recorder and would have to depend upon his memory if the prisoner disappeared, died, or was tried.
In the county building, Sheriff Decker’s deputies were processing witnesses by the dozen, taking affidavits, having girls type them, asking witnesses to sign, permitting some to leave, asking others to remain. Three Dallas detectives were waiting on Fifth Street in Irving for a couple of county deputies from Decker’s office. They would wait a half hour before the county men arrived so that they could search the home of Mrs. Ruth Paine and ask Mrs. Oswald if her husband had ever owned a rifle.
Portable television sets began to appear in the parking lot of Parkland Memorial Hospital. A police officer asked for reinforcements to get “these people out of here, because it’s going to be worse when people start coming home from work.” It was a macabre picnic. Off-duty policemen were being called in to headquarters, and they were falling over each other and the press. One lieutenant ran upstairs from the basement and had a good lead: he had just found out that someone named Oswald was missing from the School Book Depository and he might turn out to be the man they were all looking for.
There is a mass madness which begets madness. It is contagious: calm faces contort; mouths shout; impatience is paramount; ordinarily good minds become scrambled; feet run, hesitate, stop, and reverse themselves; dignity is discarded; and, when it is over, the memory of the victim is highly inaccurate. The third floor of police headquarters was, on the afternoon of November 22, 1963, the fulcrum of the madness of Dallas.
The city, sorry at first for Mrs. Kennedy, was suddenly sorry for itself. The vain community was crushed. Earle Cabell was ahead of his time that day when he moaned: “Not in Dallas!” Jack Ruby, the boss of the strippers, was not far off the mark when he asked what the assassination might do to business. The city whose sin was pride had blood on its hands. It had only the most perfunctory pity for John F. Kennedy. The tidal wave of reporters and photographers from all over the world, crashing in on the city all day and all night, the spotlight of the world focusing on Dallas brought the realization that with world attention could come condemnation. The community could be morally indicted by the nation and the world. The city which bought and sold money began to search frantically for its soul.
The third floor at headquarters was shaped like a crucifix. At the bottom was the press room, a dustbin of old stories and muted metallic voices coming out of a police radio. On the right side, coming up the green floor, was the Juvenile Bureau, the Forgery Bureau, an unmarked room, and a transcribing room for reducing taped confessions and affidavits to the written word. On the left side was “313, Auto Theft”; “316, Burglary and Theft”; “317, Homicide and Robbery”; a water cooler and a private elevator to the fifth-floor jail.
On the crossarm to the right were restrooms, elevators, and an office marked “Police Personnel.” On the opposite crossarm was a curving stone stairway, a “Perk-O-Cup machine,” and “Soda, fresh milk.” Facing these was a cigarette machine and one which reduced dollar bills to coins. At the top of the cross, on the left, was a big square office for radio dispatchers. Straight ahead were the private offices of the police hierarchy—the chief, assistant chiefs, deputy chiefs, and inspectors.
The third floor was a madhouse. The press scrambled for advantage like ruffians. Thick black cables snaked up the outside walls and across the floor. Reporters invaded police bureaus and hid telephones in desk drawers and wastebaskets. Enormous television cameras on dollies stared myopically from above the crowd. Still photographers hung from the tops of glass partitions to get pictures. The local newspapermen were inundated by their alien cousins.
A police lieutenant said that there were a hundred people in the hall. A sergeant, who had charge of screening credentials at the elevators, estimated three hundred. The net effect was as though some giant crap game had been raided and there was no place to put the prisoners except in the corridor with policemen stationed at the elevators and stairways while everyone protested or demanded counsel. The gate had been opened by Captain Glen King, the police department press agent. He had worked with the press before; he had worked with as many as four or six at a time. His credo was: “If they have press credentials, admit them.” They were in, and more were on the way. Six men were coming from The New York Times alone, to assist Tom Wicker.
The infestation of madness which had infected the police department now assailed the reporters and photographers. The shouted questions were incessant; the demands to see Lee Harvey Oswald became a chant; all hands called for a press conference with the prisoner. The structure of authority began to fall apart. Captain Glen King consulted Deputy Chief Ray Lunday about permission for television cables to come from outside, through King’s office window, onto the third floor. Lunday felt that the cables were permissible but not the unwieldy television cameras which go with them.
The deputy chief was certain that King, working directly for Chief Curry, required no permission. The request was, in effect, a courtesy call. Deputy Chief George Lumpkin was in his office, but King did not consult him. “King was operating on his own,” Lumpkin said. Curry had signed “General Order Number 81” long before it stressed cooperation with the press. He “saw no particular harm in allowing the media to observe the prisoner.” A woman was sitting in a glassed-in office crying and wringing her hands and the press demanded to know who she was.
No one could identify her. A policeman had brought her in and, on receiving fresh orders, had left. Detective L. C. Graves walked across the hall and found out that she was Mrs. Helen Markham, who had witnessed the shooting of Officer Tippit. The woman was hysterical and could barely speak. Graves tried to take a statement and said he would have to ask her to stay until they could stage a police “showup” or “lineup.”
City Manager Elgin English Crull walked across from City Hall to headquarters and was appalled by the crush of human beings. He noticed particularly that those of the press who required electricity were using city power. Switchboxes had been opened and outlets tapped. He might have shouted for silence and asserted his authority, but Mr. Crull didn’t. He seemed mollified because one of the local reporters said to him: “Please don’t blame us for what is going on. We don’t act this way.”
The blinds were drawn across the office of Captain Fritz, and he tried to blot out the roar of sound. Oswald was saying: “I know your tactics. There is a similar agency in Russia. You are using the soft touch, and, of course, the procedure in Russia would be quite different.” Unfortunately, the police department seemed to have lost control of the interrogation. The suspect did not appear to be frightened either by his arrest, the marshaling of damaging evidence, or the enormous amount of attention he was now getting from the world. If one could judge by appearances and responses, Lee Harvey Oswald felt that he was the trapper, not the trapped. He would answer the questions he could handle without risk; he would shout and snarl and lapse into silence when the interrogation touched a sensitive nerve.
He refused to discuss his military service record. He would not listen to questions about his handwriting as “Alex Hidell,” nor about Hidell’s renting a post office box in Dallas and purchasing a rifle with a telescopic sight or a snub-nosed revolver from mail order houses. He waved aside questions about his wife and children. He would respond, in the manner of a pedantic lecturer, to questions about the Soviet Union, but when asked if he had shot Officer Tippit he snapped: “No!” When asked: “Did you shoot President Kennedy?” he shouted: “No!”
With a shrug, he said he had once been to Tijuana. No one had asked. Fritz interrupted the interrogation by walking out into the bedlam of the hall to listen to reports from detectives and to hand out fresh assignments. Each time, before he left, he would glance through his bifocals at Bookhout and Hosty and say: “Any questions?”
The captain had no time for lunch, but he offered some to Oswald. The young man said he would like coffee and doughnuts. A policeman went for them. The questions continued. Often they were the same questions. As Oswald sipped the steaming coffee, Fritz reminded him that he would be fed again “upstairs.”
The panic which seized Dallas ran from its head through its nervous system. It did not show on the streets. The shops were open. Women feasted their eyes on expensive gowns at the air-conditioned Neiman Marcus store and, when the obsequious clerks murmured: “Wasn’t it awful . . . ?” the customers glanced up sharply and said: “Yes, it was awful. How much is this Hawaiian silk print?” Politicians teed off at the Dallas Athletic Club and remembered to keep their heads down. Lovers lounged in Turtle Creek Park, holding hands in the warm sun and dreaming the dreams they should.
As it was in Dallas, so it was in the capital of the nation. The buses ran their routes. Taxicabs with noisy transmissions whined through Rock Creek Park. The statue of Alexander Hamilton failed to lift a granite brow. On the edge of the Potomac, Negroes shucked bins of cherrystone clams, peeled the cellophane skin from pink curving shrimp, hacked the heads and tails from fat scaly bluefish, and gulls stood silently against the leaden sky waiting for the scraps to go overboard.
Washington did not panic outwardly. From the sky, scores of thousands of automobiles on the highways north and south and east and west picked up a ray of sunlight and bounced it briefly from windshields. The city went about its business. The shops, the vendors, the offices, the officious bureaus continued to function as though the body politic were not prostrate and numb. On this one afternoon, there was no government. The executive branch was momentarily headless; the legislative branch adjourned in grief and dissipated its august membership to the winds. The Supreme Court, which can only say “Do not,” is not constituted to contribute a positive act to the well-being of the nation. Nine learned men in black cannot balance a casket nor alter the hysterical posture of government.
In code and in plain English, radio messages flashed across the skies of the world, assessing the assassination, asking directives, reassuring command posts in far-off places, creating false alerts, tensing military muscles, causing lights to burn in embassies and legations in many countries. A member of the Cabinet asked the rhetorical question: “Who has his finger on the missile button?” No one. And no one wanted to believe that no one did. An act as stunning in its magnitude as occurred at 12:30 P.M. in Dallas could not be accepted anywhere as the deed of a lonesome malcontent. Nor would Washington or Moscow or Peking or Paris be willing to truckle to the truth for many years to come. Who could accept the thesis that a meteor, racing across the heavens, could be brought down by an idiot with a cork gun?
It was this which shook the city of Washington internally and tied up the phones, the circuits, the switchboards, even the area code, so that paralysis muted a second great city. The world knew that aircraft 26000 was up there somewhere, returning a gallant young man to his fathers, but who the hell was Lyndon Johnson? A short time before this day, an amusing program called Candid Camera had scored a hearty hit on television by asking pedestrians in a remote city: “Who is Lyndon Johnson?” Some had said: “The name is familiar. Why don’t you consult a phone book?” Others did not know. Whoever he was, he was also high in the sky with that metal casket and he was reaching for the reins of government, quickly and surely, acting patiently and almost obsequiously, which were not his characteristics. He was, basically, a boss man; a doer; a demander; a tall, awkward person blunt enough to think tact was something on which to hang a picture. When he was a young man, he and Tom Connally and Sam Rayburn and John Garner had agreed that there was no more lofty position in the world than being a senator from Texas. The vice-presidency was a step backward. On this afternoon, the tough man felt fear. Loneliness too. No one said: “Hey, Lyndon . . .” The form of address, even from old friends like Valenti and Thomas and Gonzalez and Moyers, was: “Yes, Mr. President.”
Two men wearing small buttons in their lapels walked up the short marble staircase of the old Washington Hotel into the lobby and then to the elevator. They pressed the button marked “6.” When the car stopped, they got off and walked down until they stood in front of the old rosewood door at the corner of the hotel. They knocked. The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mr. John McCormack, had a lean face with a big nose and the nasal tone of the Boston politician.
They told him that they were Secret Service men. The Speaker was next in line for the presidency. If the plane crashed, killing Lyndon Johnson, this faithful old party warhorse would take the oath as President of the United States. John McCormack never tried to be what he wasn’t. He was not a giant intellect nor a skilled debater. He understood his countrymen and their requirements; the old man with the white hair and the slight snarl had an instinct for national government. A strong President could set the policy of the administration and John McCormack would fight for it even though he might not subscribe to some of its measures.
The Speaker refused to admit the two men. He was brusque. It was not necessary for them to tell him he was the next man. He and Mrs. McCormack were averse to altering their private lives in the shadow of the Secret Service. He would not have these men accompany him in an automobile or stand over Mrs. McCormack in the shops. “Please,” he said as softly as he could, “get out of the hall.”
A block away, Maude Shaw sat in her room on the second floor of the White House. The children still slept, but she knew that they would soon awake. The thoughts of the English nanny were gloomy. She could hear the President calling from his bedroom “John-John” and “Buttons.” In her mind’s eye she could see the delight in the faces of the youngsters as they ran down the hall to the bedroom with the open door. Inside, the young President of the United States braced his breakfast tray with both hands as the children leaped upon their father with the lavish love and wet kisses which are its concomitant.
She could, in this interval of lonely introspection, remember the time that John-John disappeared in his father’s office. No one could find him and the President called his son’s name with sharp petulance. Then, from the panel of the front of his father’s desk, a door swung open and the little boy fell out, laughing uncontrollably. The desk had been presented to President McKinley by Her Majesty Victoria of Great Britain. No one knew that, behind the majestically carved Presidential Seal, there was a gateway inside the desk.
Robert Foster tapped on her door. He was a young Secret Service man and his assignment was to break the news to Miss Shaw. The facts did not lend themselves to tact or gentility. “The President is dead,” he said, and the thin, middle-aged woman bowed her head. He nodded toward the children’s rooms. “We have to get out of the White House by six o’clock,” Foster told her. “Mrs. Kennedy is flying back and doesn’t want the children around. Hurry, we haven’t much time.”
The suitcases were in Miss Shaw’s room. Foster helped her to pack. “Where are we going?” she said. The phone beside her bed tinkled softly and the light flashed. It was Mrs. Robert Kennedy, wife of the Attorney General. “I think you had better take the children to meet their mother,” she said. Ethel Kennedy’s voice trembled. “She will be at Andrews Field at six.” Miss Shaw did not know what to say. Somehow she felt that the suggestion was wrong. “Oh no,” she said at last. “Surely not. I am sure Mrs. Kennedy would not want to see the children just now. Please don’t ask me to do that.”
Ethel Kennedy thought about it. “All right,” she said. “Bring the children here. I can’t think of anything else. Can you? Anyway, I’ll leave it to you. You know best. . . .” The phones were hung up. Foster was in a hurry. His orders had been to get the Kennedy children out of the White House at once. To where? The Secret Service man was on the floor, jamming clothing into suitcases, looking at Miss Shaw pleadingly, and Maude Shaw thought of the proper retreat: their maternal grandmother’s house in Georgetown.
Mrs. Hugh Auchincloss was ideal. She loved the children, and she was gifted with a sweet maternal manner. The children loved her and, in the late afternoons, their mother had taken them to “Grand-mère’s” house many times. They would feel less “strange,” less inclined to tension or alarm in her house than anywhere else. Maude Shaw phoned, and, when the two women said “hello,” both burst into tears. Foster was hoping for a quick decision, but the sobs and the intermediate conversation delayed the decision. Mrs. Auchincloss was surprised that the children were not to be with their mother, but she kept saying: “Bring them over. Bring them over to me. This is the place for all of you. Come and stay here. . . .”
The grandmother fought for control of her emotions, then her voice softened. “Miss Shaw,” she said, “there is something I would like you to do, and I know my daughter would too.” “Of course,” the nanny said. “Anything.” “We feel that you should be the one to break the news to the children—at least to Caroline.” Maude Shaw relapsed in shock. “Oh no,” she said loudly. “Please don’t ask me to do that.”
“We feel that you should be the one . . .”
This made it the wish, the command, of the mother as well as the grandmother. “Please, Miss Shaw. It is for the best. They trust you. . . . I am asking you as a friend. . . . Please. . . .” The children’s nurse was overwhelmed by a feeling of horror. She stood at the phone as Foster stared at her beseechingly. “All right,” she murmured crisply. “I will tell Caroline when I put her to bed tonight.”
The children were awakened. They were cheered to find that they were leaving at once for the Auchincloss home. Nighties and pajamas and spare dresses and slips and shoes and little suits and blouses were all tucked into the valises. Also a special toy or two, a doll. Foster led the little party out and down the broad dark corridor to the elevator. He had a car on the South Lawn and it had been waiting a long time.
Maude Shaw wondered, “Why me?” The family was full of intelligent people. There were cousins and uncles and aunts aplenty. Could not one of them sit in privacy with these babies and break the news gently? Could not someone explain that God often calls a soul suddenly, one that he wants in heaven at once? Could not someone have told them that death is nothing more than a postponed reunion? That their father would be as happy waiting for them to join him as they were sorrowful at his leave-taking?
Maude Shaw made half a promise. She would tell Caroline only.
The Cabinet plane, a third of the way back from Hawaii to California, was on an almost identical course with Air Force One and at practically the same speed, but they were several thousand miles apart. Dean Rusk’s 707 begged for additional information, and it arrived, either on teletype or by phone, chopped in segments. The Secretary of State remained in the private cabin. The others wandered in the public area, brooding, trying to assimilate the fact that Kennedy was gone and trying to decipher what this would mean to each of the careers aboard this plane. The shock to the personal senses was the passing of Kennedy; the shock to the political senses was the accession of Johnson. No one doubted that the new man would achieve a keynote of continuity by announcing that he would adhere to the Kennedy policies; it would be a violation of historical precedent to do it with the same assortment of faces.
Someone suggested a poker game. A table was found and some chairs. There was nothing better to do. Cards would be preferable to thinking. The gentlemen placed money on the table—perhaps the money they had planned to use for shopping in Tokyo. Pierre Salinger, the cigar smoker, enjoyed the game immensely but seldom won. The players agreed on table stakes and, in a moment, the mourning period had been postponed and Kennedy’s august appointees were saying: “Here’s your ten and ten more.” “Dealer draws three.” “Smiling ladies, like the Andrews Sisters.” “All pink.”
Alone, except for a mess sergeant, Dean Rusk read the teletypes. At last a sketchy story on the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald, began to click on the plane. It told about his defection to the Soviet Union, his life in Russia, and his membership in the Fair Play for Cuba group. This was difficult to believe, because most knowledgeable persons were certain that the assassin must have been an extremist-right-winger.
A Communist in Dallas, Texas? This would be as difficult to digest as a story that Josef Stalin had been killed by a Russian fascist. “If this is true,” Rusk said to no one in particular, “it is going to have repercussions around the world for years to come.” It is possible that he saw the news as the first evidence of a Communist conspiracy. This would have amused the loner who parried questions in far-off Dallas. When he worked in Minsk, the Russians couldn’t even get him to attend party meetings in the factory.
The biographical material on Lee Harvey Oswald had also passed through the hands of Forrest V. Sorrels, the wandering Secret Service man. He asked Chief James Rowley in Washington whether PRS had been aware of Oswald’s Marxist background. PRS—the alert file of persons dangerous to the President—did not have a listing under Oswald. Rowley, hearing of Oswald’s defection to Russia, asked his superiors at the Treasury Department to contact the State Department to find out what they knew about the prisoner. Rowley would be interested to know why his agency had never been told about this defector.
Wheels were turning. They spun slowly at first but, with each passing minute, they accelerated. Files which were dusty with time were reopened, and cards of various colors withdrawn, scrutinized, and copied. The State Department had a dossier on one Lee Harvey Oswald. Several agencies became interested. Treasury wanted to relay all possible information on this man to the Secret Service, the agency primarily responsible. They wanted a digest of the dossier. The Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had a small file on the man, now wanted every shred of information. The Central Intelligence Agency, which sensed international complications, asked for copies. Aboard Air Force One, the news reached President Lyndon Johnson through Major-General Chester Clifton, who was sorting messages in the communications shack forward. The President asked for a quick check of the Oswald situation to find out if the State Department had erred in permitting this man to return to the United States.
There was blame to be spread, guilt to be impugned, punishment to be meted. No crime as monumental in size as this could be laid at the feet of a sullen ignoramus. It was a blessing that he was a Marxist, because, by negation, it absolved Dallas. Of course Oswald’s brand of Marxism was not related to the despotic socialism practiced in Russia, but the American mind lumps the two in political idealism, even though they are anathema to each other, and both have contempt for Bolsheviks, nihilists, and Mensheviks. It was sufficient to call Lee Harvey Oswald a Communist. The only other question to be resolved was to find out who was responsible for bringing him back from Moscow.
The poker players drank. They spoke in grunts, and Salinger won almost a thousand dollars. The drinks and the money were meaningless. For a time one player or another would break in with a fond recollection of Kennedy, but these sad pleasantries petered out. These were professionals with additional streams to cross and hills to climb, so they concentrated on Lyndon Johnson, wondering aloud what kind of a man he was. Everyone agreed that he was a master politician. Call him a horse trader, a locker-room Disraeli, a compromiser—Johnson was a winner. He was a doer; they knew that.
Some tried to speculate about the Johnson “team.” The Cabinet was surprised at how little it knew. Lyndon Johnson had been Vice-President for almost three years and he worked across the street from the White House in an office in the old State Department Building, where there were baroque doors and high Victorian ceilings laced with heating pipes. They seemed sorry to admit that they had not cultivated him. It was recalled that Johnson had been the youngest majority leader in the United States Senate, but that showed legislative acumen, not judgment.
Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, the man with the pepper-and-salt hair, had campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in 1960. At the time, he had no appreciation for the upstart from Massachusetts. Now he said tactlessly: “I gather you don’t think the world is at an end?” The poker game broke up. The gentlemen began to bicker. The plane hung between sky and sea and the men of power accused each other and used words like “rumormonger,” “treachery,” “hearsay.” They were not sure that Johnson had not been shot, too. There was word that a Secret Service man and a Dallas policeman were dead—so the plot must be widespread.
They owed allegiance and each was eager to flex the knee in fealty, but to whom? Even Rusk, meditating in his private cabin, wasn’t sure. The big Boeing shrieked through the sunny skies. There was no time for tears. The dry eye of power was focused on power.
The flow of information from Gordon Shanklin’s office to FBI headquarters in Washington was steady. Except for a few lapses, the line might have remained open. Shortly after 3 P.M. the agent in charge spoke to Washington and said he had some news on the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository. It was not a Mauser or a British weapon, but rather a cheap Italian military surplus rifle called a Mannlicher-Carcano. The caliber was 6.5 and the four-power scope was Japanese. The serial number, Shanklin said, was C2766.
His men had phoned local sports goods houses in Dallas and had learned that they had little call for Mannlicher-Carcanos. However, their catalogues showed that the importer was a firm named Crescent Firearms, Inc., of New York. The New York office should be alerted and start tracking that C2766 at once. There was similar information about the snub-nosed revolver carried by Oswald, but the FBI was much more interested in the genesis of the gun which they believed killed the President. It was almost closing time when the New York FBI descended on Crescent Firearms, but the records were brought out. C2766? That was part of a big shipment of rifles sent to Klein’s Sporting Goods, Inc., of Chicago. The trail bent to the Midwest, and the FBI followed it.
Official Washington began to depart for Andrews Air Force Base, across the river. Second-echelon officials, diplomats from many countries, Supreme Court justices, bureau chiefs, wives, congressional leaders, all began the pilgrimage. The Attorney General was shocked. One of the many opinions of that day which cannot be rationalized was that Robert Kennedy seemed to look upon the homecoming as a private funeral. It was closer to being the return of Caesar to Rome, but Bobby thought of it as the return of his dead brother. He tried forbidding or dissuading some from going to Andrews. Then he heard that more and more dignitaries were already waiting there. Others were asking the military for helicopters. Black limousines were crossing the river to the air base with pale shocked faces silent in the back seats.
Others called at the White House first, although there was no one present to whom condolences could be offered, and some of these were put to work. Sargent Shriver, the handsome and articulate brother-in-law of John F. Kennedy, arrived and assumed the position of chef de cortège. He was director of the Peace Corps, but, even though the body was not back in Washington, the work of organizing funeral arrangements and—more important—the team of reliable men who would be needed night and day, every minute of every hour, to assist Sargent Shriver, had to begin now.
Two stenographers were in President Kennedy’s office removing some of his keepsakes. The memento book of photos of his trip to the home of his Kennedy forebears at Wexford, Ireland, reposed on a table behind the desk and suddenly disappeared. A painting of a sailing ship followed. A mounted fish in an office across the hall came off the wall. The rocker with the U.S.S. Kittyhawk embroidered on it was placed on a dolly and wheeled into the hall. It was incredible that anyone could have issued such a callous order, but the mementos were being moved abruptly.
By hurrying them outside to be carried away to a private place, the press cameras could make the Kennedy bric-a-brac appear to be forlorn mementos, could make it seem as though the new man was in a hurry to take over the executive office. In time, the Queen Victoria desk would disappear, too, although it was the property of the United States.
Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota phoned the White House and asked if he could pay his respects by waiting at the air base for the body of the President. He was told “No.” “The hell with you,” Humphrey said. “I’m going.” The President’s alter ego, Ted Sorensen, sat at his White House desk, his back to the fireplace mantle. He had researched and assisted Kennedy with a book called Profiles in Courage. Sorensen—an incisive phrase-maker—had written many of the speeches John F. Kennedy had delivered. The President had drunk deeply from the semantic genius of the quiet man, but there had been no public accolade for Sorensen. He was the Man in the Back Room, the man who could make mundane matters sound lofty and idealistic. All day long and far into the evening he had hand-polished words for his god. He sat in the office, thinking as the sun leaned west and bronzed the black oaks on the lawn. Ted Sorensen was asked if he would go to the airport. “If the others go,” he said, “I will go.”
The Pentagon monitored a Red Chinese radio at Hsinhua, which announced the sudden death of President Kennedy at 4:14 A.M. Hsinhua time. Radio Budapest played solemn organ music and commented that Cardinal Mindszenty, who had imprisoned himself years before in the American embassy in Hungary, would sing a memorial Mass for Kennedy. At 3:20 New York time, Martin Agronsky announced for NBC: “After the initial shock, President Kennedy’s secretary began methodically removing mementos from his desk—the family pictures, the PT-109 souvenir—making ready for the new President’s arrival.”
There was a world full of people who each would have liked to render some small service, and this applied also to men of position and power. The commanding officer at the U.S. Naval Hospital at Bethesda, Maryland, Captain R. O. Canada, Jr., ordered an ambulance to be dispatched to Andrews Air Force Base. So far as the captain knew, no one had asked for one. Aboard AF-1, two requests for an ambulance had been relayed to the capital city, but both had been refused on the grounds that the District of Columbia had a law prohibiting the transportation of the deceased in ambulances.
Canada, who sat at his television set, recalled that, eight years ago, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson had sustained a myocardial infarction. It had been moderately severe, and Johnson had been his patient. The crushing events of this day could—probably wouldn’t—but could induce another heart attack. Captain Canada sent the ambulance and told the personnel to wait for Air Force One. Two attendants left at once, driving slowly through the rolling autumnal hills of Maryland, across the fresh-running streams, through the city, and down Route Five into the farm country where, almost a hundred years before, a man with a broken leg rode a horse to escape a shattered and disorganized government after the assassination of a President.
One of the first witnesses to get home was Howard Brennan. He carried his steel helmet up the walk at 6814 Woodward Street, Dallas, and his mind was troubled. For a long time he had been joining pipes along the railroad right of way at the overpass. Brennan had been content working in the open. He was hitting the middle years and he had learned the value of not becoming involved in anything but pleasantries. His daughter and a little grandson had returned to live again with him and with Mrs. Brennan, and Howard Brennan had accepted it, plodding on with his daily labor and taking his ease at home after supper.
He was an eyewitness. Sitting on a low wall, he had looked up and had seen a man in a window take careful aim and kill a President. Howard Brennan had submitted to the questioning of policemen and deputy sheriffs. He had stood in the county building with others milling about, shouting and declaring and denying, and his spirit began to shrivel. He was an eyewitness. Reluctantly he had read the statement and signed it, but Brennan had no heart for any of this.
“Will this be confidential?” he had asked, worried. The policemen said it was confidential. Brennan wished hard that he had not opened his mouth. He began to think that he was the only true eyewitness. Nobody knew who or what organization was behind the assassination. Somebody said a Secret Service man was already dead. Also a cop in Oak Clif. There may have been others. The Secret Service man who questioned him appeared to be excited.
Mr. Brennan began to feel a growing fear. They had asked him pointedly: “Do you think you could recognize the man with the gun if you saw him again?” Howard Brennan said: “Yes.” Why had he said that? Why become involved? He was living in an era in which families prided themselves on not knowing who lived next door. No one wanted to be involved in any controversial situation—even a traffic accident.
In the house, he learned that his wife knew about the assassination. Everybody knew. There was nothing else on television or radio. Howard Brennan sat with his wife and told her quietly that he was an eyewitness. He had seen it. Actually watched it happen. The husband said that he had a growing fear that something bad could occur to the whole family. No one knew who or what was behind the assassination and Brennan did not want to be known as the man who could identify the rifleman.
He talked of moving out of Dallas secretly. They could take their daughter and grandson and get out. No one need know. It would mean giving up his job as a steam fitter. Mrs. Brennan was troubled because her husband was frightened. She listened to him patiently and said it wouldn’t work. A person can’t get away, she said. A person can’t hide—no matter where he may go.
One of the surprising aspects of Lieutenant J. C. Day’s work was that he couldn’t find fingerprints. Normally there would be prints on the barrel of the rifle and the stock. There should be parts of prints on the empty shells from the gun. He and his Crime Laboratory left police headquarters and returned to the School Book Depository. Of course Day knew that, in his work, when a suspected lethal instrument was found to be free of fingerprints it was usually a sign that it had been carefully wiped by a person who might have a sense of guilt.
The entire sixth floor had been isolated by policemen. Day and his assistants went to work in that corner window where the empty shells had been found. They dusted the bricks on the ledge; they examined the heating pipes behind the assassin’s seat on a cardboard box. The men moved about gingerly, disturbing nothing. They got nothing until they brushed the top of the box lying in front of the window. This, it was assumed, would be the low seat for the killer. On the front edge, facing the window, they saw a palm print come up clearly.
It was the first technological discovery, and yet it proved nothing. Anyone could have been sitting near that window, and anyone could have leaned on a box. The case against Oswald was to be built of chips and bits of evidence, the whole weighing more than the sum of the parts. The lieutenant backed his men away from the print, took strips of Scotch Tape and pressed it down on top of the white palm print. Then Day wrote on the box: “From top of box Oswald apparently sat on to fire gun. Lieut. J. C. Day.” He tore the top off and took it back to headquarters.
The front door of the Carousel Club was open. The afternoon light bounced off the glassed-in photographs of strippers and shoveled a little radiance to the dusty interior. It was a place smelling of old cigar smoke and whiskey-stained tables. LaVerne Crafard kept the bar as clean as possible for his boss, Jack Ruby. Mr. Crafard was twenty-two; everybody called him “Smokey.” The chairs were still upside down on the tables. A machine behind the bar hummed as it made ice cubes.
Joy Dale arrived. She had an appointment to give a novice a dancing lesson. Miss Dale was an exotic dancer. Strip joints presented a difficult means of earning money. The pay was small. The customers demanded new bodies. The men were raucous and sometimes ungentlemanly in their comments. They tired of the same girls. A dancer with a good figure must, of necessity, develop new seductive routines and new and enticing ways of removing clothing.
Miss Dale had been to the hospital with her daughter. When she arrived at the Carousel, a light was over the bar. The rest was dim as such places usually are in daylight. The fat, rumpled figure of Jack Ruby emerged from his little office. “The club won’t be open tonight and tomorrow night,” he said briskly. “I don’t know how long.” He stared off for a moment, and then wagged his head slowly. “It’s unbelievable!” he said. “How could a man shoot the President of our country?”
Joy Dale thought of it from a maternal side. “Can you possibly think how this woman feels?” she said. “She just lost her son, and now she’s lost her husband.” Ruby began to weep. His emotions, good and bad, were multitudinous and always close to the surface. Often they persuaded him to be unduly generous, or to fight, or to want to exterminate an anti-Semite, or to weep for someone he had never met.
“You shouldn’t,” he said, choking. “He should be killed.” Jack Ruby called Crafard and ordered him to prepare a sign for the front door of the club, proclaiming that it would be closed. It was not to be posted until a late hour, because Ruby did not want his competitors to know until the last moment. It was, in a real sense, Ruby’s contribution to the memory of a President. Business, on the other hand, had been poor. The sacrifice would not cost much.
His moods changed and blended as the colored prisms of light did on the stage. Jack Ruby found the world to be complex and confusing, and he simplified it to “creeps” and “good guys.” The “good guys” sometimes became “regular guys,” but the “creeps” were unalterable. Policemen were “regular guys” unless they gave Mr. Ruby a summons for a nightclub violation or a traffic citation, at which point the individual policeman became a “creep.”
Ruby never charged a policeman for attendance at his nightclubs. He often took them into his office and pulled a bottle of whiskey from a drawer and set it on top of the desk. Some, who were more ambitious, were given personal introductions to certain strippers. “Be nice to this guy,” Ruby would say. “He’s a frenna mine.” Ruby had felt his Jewishness from the ghetto days in Chicago, but he found no happiness or pride in it. Ruby was a defensive Jew who forbade his comedians to tell dialect jokes from the stage, who fought furiously with his fists any man who cast aspersions on Jews, but who was seldom seen in a synagogue.
This afternoon he thought seriously of going to Friday night services. It would be an additional mark of respect from Ruby to Kennedy. It was not something he would do for anybody, not even for himself. But closing the club and praying in a tallis in a temple had the mark of what Ruby referred to as “class.” He would do it.
He watched Joy Dale giving the dance lesson to the student, without seeing any of it. Then he went back to his office and called his sister Eva. Mrs. Grant was tired of the phone calls. She tried to forestall her brother’s nonstop dissertation by reminding him that they had no food for the weekend. He told her that he would stop in the Ritz delicatessen and pick up some cold cuts and salads. This, too, assumed the form of an accolade because Jack Ruby often bought pounds of salami and wurst and potato salad and cole slaw for policemen who worked late on a big case, firemen fighting a night battle with flames, radio commentators who talked through the late hours.
He told his sister that the policeman who was shot, Tippit, was a dear friend of his. This was an honest mistake. There was another Tippit on the police force. Ruby had never met the dead man. Mrs. Grant told him that the killer had been arrested. Someone named “Oswald.” Her brother’s reaction was typical: “He’s a creep. He has no class.” The grief, the welling tears were transmuted at once to roaring anger. He talked on and on about the dead President, his poor weeping wife, and the little kiddies who had no father. He was thinking, he said, of sending flowers to the place where the shots were fired. Thinking . . .
On the second floor at Parkland Hospital, Dr. Shaw was completing chest surgery on Governor John Connally. The patient responded well. He displayed good reserves. Shaw and his team were finishing the sutures and examining the drains when Dr. George T. Shires arrived. This man had been in Galveston when he heard the news and had managed to return to Dallas in incredibly fast time. Shires was professor of surgery at Parkland, and Chairman of the Department of Surgery at Southwestern Medical School.
He was senior to all the doctors present, but Shires did not impose this on them. He scrubbed and was gowned and, walking around the supine form of the Governor, he was given a whispered rundown of injuries and saw that the work remaining was the multiple fracture of the right wrist and the laceration of the left thigh. Without further conversation, Dr. Shires enlisted the assistance of Doctors McClelland, Baxter, and Patman, and they began the delicate job of putting a complex wrist back together.
On Oak Lawn, the ambulance of Vernon Oneal pulled into the back parking lot. He was irritated. The whole day had been frustrating. The phones inside jangled with calls from patients who, in the shadow of the catastrophic event, had heart attacks, fainting spells, and nausea. They wanted ambulances and they were wanted at once.
Oneal recalled that one ambulance, on an epileptic call, had been impounded at the emergency entrance to Parkland by the Secret Service. The ambulance and the personnel had nothing to do with the assassination but the men were forced to sit in the “bus” waiting for permission to leave. Then Oneal himself had responded to the crisis call for “the best casket you have,” and that had resolved itself into a series of arguments between Dallas and the federal government over an autopsy.
They were forced to run the casket out of crowded hospital corridors and the Secret Service driver had agreed to meet Oneal at the mortuary but instead had headed at top speed for Love Field. Vernon Oneal had been warned by government men and police to remain outside the fence. They were not interested in the fact that the ambulance belonged to him—the casket in which the President reposed was also his.
He had been required to wait until that airplane was reduced to a small speck in the sky. Then the cops said: “Now get your ambulance out of here.” Vernon Oneal was an old-fashioned man. He wondered whatever happened to the words, “Thank you.”
As he parked the white ambulance, a black car was edging up the ramp of a C-130 plane at the airport. This was the President’s Lincoln. It had been a triumphal vehicle on many occasions, a death trap once. All day long and through most of the night, evidence in the crime would be moving from Dallas to Washington. The seven-passenger car was the biggest item, and the Secret Service detail was sorry that hospital orderlies had sponged it out.
The slide rules and cellophane disks made the computations. Colonel Swindal leaned back in his seat on the flight deck. Air Force One was ticking off 625 statute miles per hour. To maintain that speed, the throttle handles were being yanked backward a little every fifteen minutes. The ship was burning seven tons of fuel per hour and, as the weight decreased, speed increased even though the throttle settings remained static. The plane was never permitted to go beyond .84 of the speed of sound.
The transponder was on permanently, so that the ground stations could track this aircraft easily. It showed up on radar screens as a larger, whiter blip, drifting like a slow rowboat across a large dark lake. Swindal yanked one earphone loose. Ahead and slightly to starboard an early moon was rising. Behind the thundering plane the sun had already changed from polished brass to dull bronze.
Estimated time of arrival at Andrews would be 2305 Zulu, or Greenwich, England, time. For two hours and fifteen minutes, the President had been snatched from earth. It was as though, subconsciously, those who realized that he must be given back to the earth permanently had taken him almost eight miles straight up to keep him, for an hour or two, from the destiny of all clay.
The air was smooth at this altitude. Now and then the flight deck shuddered, and the trim tab wheels spun forward and back like thinking things. Then the serenity of flight asserted itself again, and the subdued shriek became a hum, a one-note lullaby. There was time to think, time for coffee, time to listen to the latest information from the communications group sitting behind the flight deck.
Back in the ornate President’s stateroom, activity was still the therapy of choice. The President refused to permit himself to sit and think. He had Liz Carpenter, Mrs. Johnson’s secretary, working on a short statement to be read by Johnson after the body was removed from the plane. He had Valenti and Moyers as idea men. They sat near him, venturing thoughts that he should do this or not do that.
He was seldom more eloquent, or more helpless, than when he phoned Kennedy’s mother. “I wish to God there was something I could do,” he said. The tough fiber of the man softened. No words were adequate. And yet the impotence of the country was in the words. Rose Kennedy never lost her composure—had never lost it in the torrent of adversity which seemed, at times, to inundate the Kennedy family. She had her complete faith, her God, her Church. She thanked the President for his thoughtfulness in calling. She maintained her composure. Mrs. Johnson said: “Oh, Mrs. Kennedy, we must all realize how fortunate the country was to have your son as long as it did.”
The conversation continued for a while, the proper words and the correct responses. Rose Kennedy did not ask Mrs. Johnson to switch her to Jacqueline Kennedy, who was sitting fifty feet behind the Johnsons. Nor did Mrs. John F. Kennedy phone her mother-in-law.* When the phone was put back on the cradle, the President asked for Mrs. John Connally at Parkland Hospital. When he learned that his political protégé was going to recover, the President’s spirits seemed to lift. Nellie sounded bright and cheerful. She said that the Governor had sustained the surgery well and that he was having drains placed in his wrist.
Mr. Johnson noticed Charles Roberts of Newsweek and Merriman Smith of UPI writing the story of the plane trip on typewriters, one of which was borrowed. He stooped over both men and whispered that he wanted all of the Kennedy White House staff and all of the Kennedy Cabinet to remain on with the Johnson Administration. This, of course, was the first big pronouncement of the new administration. General Godfrey McHugh noticed the writers and reminded them that “throughout this trip I remained back there with the President.” Admiral Burkley, Kennedy’s presidential physician, wanted them to note “that I was with him when he died.” In the gleaming, speeding aluminum tube, each one knew that the only recorded history would be what Roberts and Smith wrote, and each had a specific reason for wanting to be a part of it.
Johnson sat with Kilduff and made memoranda on sheets of paper of personalities he should meet at once at Andrews, of others who should be called to his office this evening at the Executive Building office, of what time to have a critical Cabinet meeting in the morning. The more ground he covered, the more there was left to cover. It seemed that he was phoning McGeorge Bundy in the White House Situation Room every few minutes. Bundy was in the basement amidst all of the “instantaneous” sources of information from around the world. He was plotting the future. Upstairs, in the White House, Sargent Shriver was mapping the past.
Still busy, President Johnson saw O’Brien walking by, talking to a congressman. He called Kennedy’s legislative assistant to his side. “Larry,” he said, looking up earnestly from the desk, “you have a blank check on handling this program. Go ahead just as you would have under President Kennedy.” The redhead nodded and walked on. This early he could see an obstacle ahead unseen by Johnson. Jack Kennedy did not live to see his legislative program for his country enacted into law; the Congress seemed to be disenchanted with the charmer. Now that Kennedy was dead, if Johnson implemented the Kennedy program into law, he would not be thanked by the Kennedy group. In fact, this big, industrious man who took charge of the nation so quickly and so firmly was going to meet rancor and contempt for his work.*
The communications crew at the forward end of AF-1 could not handle the traffic. The outgoing calls were heavy enough, but too many officials in Washington wanted to speak to Johnson or to Mrs. Kennedy. She wasn’t accepting any incoming calls unless they were from her brother-in-law Robert. Other calls were referred to her secretary, Pamela Turnure, the dark, attractive girl who matched Mrs. Kennedy in beauty. Texas politicians were phoning the new President. General Clifton asked Andrews to have a forklift ready to carry the casket down the rear exit; the loose handle would be dangerous if the casket was to be carried. He also phoned the Army’s Walter Reed Hospital and said that the autopsy would be performed there.
The President was conscious that Mrs. Kennedy might, at this time, have composed herself and want to express her wishes. He sent Malcolm Kilduff aft, but the lady had no wishes. This was done several times, but there was nothing she wanted from the President. Kilduff felt the stiff politeness of the Clan Kennedy and recognized his role as the emissary under flag of truce. It was said that the trip to Texas was to be Kilduff’s final assignment as assistant press secretary. Whether it was President Kennedy who was displeased with his work, or the hatchetman, Kenny O’Donnell, Kilduff was on the scene when the new President had no press expert.
Dr. Burkley, standing alone, noticed that Mrs. Kennedy was alone. He approached and, rather than bend down to speak to her, dropped to his knees. It was a comical attitude for the dignified admiral. He was at eye level with her and he said: “It’s going to be necessary to take the President to a hospital before he goes to the White House.” She was in a trance-like state, but the young lady came out of it quickly. “Why?” she said. The tone was sharp because she had had her fill of hospitals and their cast-iron rules.
Burkley looked like a supplicant at prayer. “The doctors must remove the bullet,” he said. “The authorities must know the type. It becomes evidence.” Mrs. Kennedy could understand the situation. The admiral did not use the word autopsy, which entails evisceration and the removal of the brain and other organs. She asked where the bullet could be removed. Burkley said he had no preference although he had. He was a United States Navy admiral, and Kennedy had been a Navy lieutenant. “For security reasons it should be a military hospital,” he said.
Mrs. Kennedy was prompted to say the right word. “Bethesda,” she said. The admiral was satisfied. He got off his knees and went forward to the communications shack to alert the naval hospital. The knees became a trend. General McHugh dropped to his knees to ask Mrs. Kennedy to “freshen up” before the plane landed. “No,” she said adamantly. The words had become a set piece: “I want them to see what they’ve done.”
David Powers replaced the general. The area where Mrs. Kennedy sat began to resemble an open confessional. Each man found it easier to converse with her by dropping to two knees or one. Mr. O’Donnell occupied the only other seat in the back of the plane and no man was prepared to challenge the high priest.
In the forward compartment, Liz Carpenter worked on a short statement to be delivered by the President at Andrews Air Force Base. She was block-printing it. Mrs. Carpenter would like to have used a typewriter but she reminded herself that “they are their typewriters. Besides, they make noise.” She wished that the Kennedys would understand that the Johnsons had also lost a President. As she wrote, she remembered a ball in the East Room a month ago. Lyndon Johnson had danced with Mrs. Kennedy. He knew that the First Lady seldom accompanied her husband on trips. The Vice-President had put on his best smile, “Why not come to Texas with the President?” he had said. She wrinkled her nose. “You have never seen a real ranch,” he said. She began to brighten. “A real Texas ranch. We’re going to bring in some good Tennessee walking horses and have a ranch barbecue . . .” “I think I’ll go,” said Mrs. Kennedy. “It could be fun.” Liz Carpenter, a woman thinking like a woman, wondered if Mrs. Kennedy felt any gratitude to Johnson for persuading her to go.
The deputy sheriffs arrived in Irving at 3:30 P.M., and they could see the Dallas group waiting at the corner. The newcomers wanted to know the story and Detective Guy Rose of Captain Fritz’s staff said that Oswald lived in the middle of the block, the house at 2515. Rose was the senior in the group; Richard Stovall and Adamcik were present to assist him. The county men were invited because the Dallas detectives were outside their city line.
The men discussed the best way of finding evidence in the house and wanted to know what they might be looking for. The case was new and Detective Rose didn’t have much information; headquarters said that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably a communist. He had spent years in Russia; he came back with a Russian wife. The thing was mixed up, confusing, but Oswald had a room on North Beckley, and his wife lived here with a family named Paine.
The neighborhood knew that something was amiss within a few minutes. The street was suburban, with cars parked between sidewalk and garage; bicycles and roller skates rested on lawns. Children home from school shouted to each other and saw the strange men and lapsed into silence. Mothers, spending 75 percent of their time with wash and vacuum cleaners and gas ranges, spent the other 25 percent glancing between curtains to see that the children had not wandered off. They, too, saw the newcomers, standing in a group and whispering. After that, no woman left her window.
Rose waved the men to follow him. The house at 2515 was ranch style, a young home which looked old. The gray paint was flat. The roof shingles were something between beet red and pink. A car stood in the short driveway before a closed overhang door. The hedges were of varying heights, depending upon the nourishment each found. The one strong healthy attribute was a sturdy oak which stood in the center of the front lawn, its gnarled limbs extending over the street and back across the edge of the one-story roof.
The front door was open. Rose and Stovall led the group. Two walked around behind the house, in case anyone inside tried to run. The television was on and Detective Rose could see two women sitting on a couch, their eyes on the TV screen. He had just reached the little porch when one of the women stood and smiled. “I’ve been expecting you all,” she said.
Rose was astonished. He introduced himself and the others and the woman said she was Mrs. Ruth Paine. “I’ve been expecting you to come out,” she said graciously. “Come right on in.” They stepped inside, a bit cautiously, and Mrs. Paine introduced Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald as a Russian lady who spoke no English. The policeman’s impulse was to get on a phone and ask Captain Fritz what to do.
However Stovall began to move around the sitting room and the kitchen, and Adamcik came from somewhere and nodded to the ladies and walked into a bedroom. The search was on and Guy Rose wanted to ask questions, but he was confused, so he asked if he could use a phone. In headquarters Fritz took the call and said: “Well, ask her about her husband. Ask her if her husband has a rifle.”
Mrs. Paine volunteered to translate, and Rose said: “Ask her if her husband had a rifle.” Mrs. Paine said, “No” emphatically, but Marina Oswald, hugging the baby to her breast, said, “Yes” in Russian. The surprise on Ruth’s face matched Rose’s. “We have Lee Oswald in custody,” Rose said diffidently. “He is charged with shooting an officer.” Mrs. Paine translated the news to Mrs. Oswald, and she said something in Russian.
Rose was asked if he had a search warrant. He said no, “but I can get the sheriff out here with one if you want.” The lady smiled as one does who has nothing to conceal. “No,” she said, ”that’s all right. Be my guests.” She was retranslating her opinions back to Russian for Marina’s benefit, and it became obvious that Mrs. Oswald was not happy with her friend’s show of initiative. Ruth Paine cheerfully answered what questions she could, without translating for Marina. Adamcik carefully examined the backyard, where the baby clothes swung from breeze-swept lines. Deputy Sheriffs Harry Weatherford and J. L. Oxford frisked the house, the eyes darting from end tables to couches, lifting cushions and ashtrays, opening drawers—a haphazard operation in which officers worked fast, repeating work already done.
Marina Oswald’s expression changed to deep concern, perhaps fright. She pointed to the garage. In Russian she said: “He keeps a rifle in there.” Mrs. Paine repeated the words in English. She thought it strange, maybe incredible, that anyone could conceal a rifle in her garage without her knowledge. She told Detective Rose: “He keeps a rifle in there.” They went out into the garage.
The space was not used for a car. It was small and cheaply made, with four two-by-four beams overhead, a cluttered garage down a step from the kitchen. There were a heater, two old tires, a big band saw with sawdust underneath, some cinder blocks, several cardboard cartons used to store odds and ends, a box of tools and an electric light bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.
“Where?” said Rose. Mrs. Oswald led them into the garage. She pointed to an old blanket rolled into a conical shape. It was lying in the sawdust under the band saw. “I saw part of the rifle in that,” she said. Mrs. Paine stepped on the edge of the blanket. “She says her husband kept a gun in here,” she said. Officer Rose approached and Ruth stepped off. He stooped and placed his hand under the middle of the blanket. As he lifted it out from under the saw, Marina Oswald appeared to be stunned. The blanket hung lifelessly at both ends.
Mrs. Paine brought her hand to her mouth. She had thought that the police were merely investigating employees from the School Book Depository, the place from which shots had been fired. Lee Harvey Oswald was but one of many. Besides the policeman had said something about the shooting of a cop. She felt a grave realization overcome her as she thought about the missing rifle and the assassin in the window. She glanced at Marina. Her friend was not one to display emotion, but the pale complexion was white.
The policeman was also surprised. Before he lifted the blanket, he had been certain that a gun was inside. He thought he could detect the outline of it. There was a piece of white string around the narrow end of the blanket. They went back to the living room and Rose asked the women to sit there. He phoned Captain Fritz and told him about the empty blanket. Rose was ordered to bring the women to headquarters with whatever other pertinent material was found.
Another officer, out in the garage, emptied a cardboard box belonging to the Oswalds. It contained several hundred “Freedom for Cuba” leaflets. These were brought to the living room, too. Adamcik was prowling around the front of the house. A youngish woman approached him and introduced herself as Mrs. Linnie Mae Randall. She gave her address as 2439 East Fifth, and she pointed to it. Her brother, Wesley Frazier, drove Oswald to work this morning, she said. She and her mother had been listening to all the excitement on television and had heard Oswald’s name mentioned. She said she wanted to report that she was looking out her window this morning and saw Lee put something long on the back seat of Wes’s car. It was wrapped in paper or maybe a box.
Adamcik took out his little notebook and wrote some of it. “If you want to see my brother Wesley,” Mrs. Randall said, “he’s visiting my father right now at the Irving Professional Center.” Yes, they would want to talk to Wesley. They would want to speak to her again. The policeman thanked her.
The ransacking of the house was haphazard. In the carton with the “Freedom for Cuba” leaflets were two photographs of Oswald holding his rifle. They were overlooked at the time. Stovall asked if Marina’s husband had left a farewell note or said anything when he left home that morning. Mrs. Oswald shrugged. She had been half asleep when he dressed. A deputy went to her bedroom and glanced into a Russian teacup and came out of the room with Lee’s wedding ring. It was of no great significance to the police, but it told the whole heartbreaking story to Marina. He had never removed his wedding ring. He had never returned it to her, even in the heat of arguments when he had beaten her with his fists. The ring in the teacup was a resignation from marriage. The end. In her heart, the young Russian pharmacist knew that, whatever the crime, “my crazy one” was in it.
The screen door swung open and a good-looking man walked in. He smiled at Ruth and said: “As soon as I heard about it I hurried over to see if I could help.” The police asked who this was. It was Michael Paine, husband of Ruth, an aircraft executive. The marriage was a friendly estrangement, difficult to define. The police studied the man and wondered why he would “hurry over” as soon as he heard about it. Mr. Paine meant that the airwaves were laden with the name Lee Harvey Oswald and he knew that Oswald was a weekend boarder at his wife’s house.
The cops found Russian books and, not knowing whether they were significant or not, stacked them in the pile with the wedding ring, the rifle blanket, Mrs. Oswald’s passport, her birth certificate, immigration card, the birth certificates of the children—June and Rachel. There were some letters written in Russian from Marina’s family in Minsk, a diploma, a few communist tracts. From Mrs. Paine’s bedroom the officers removed a large assortment of vacation color slides, a Sears Tower slide projector, a metal filing box.
With no advance knowledge of what to take, they began to outdo each other in picking up material to be assessed at headquarters. Within a few minutes, they had a second slide projector, three boxes of high fidelity records, a telephone index book, even a wall bracket with instructions for mounting. A policeman riffled through a magazine, and, being mystified about its contents, tossed it onto the pile. It was Simplicity, a sewing periodical.
The chief walked into headquarters like an intruder. He came up out of an array of vehicles storming in and out of the basement, screeching brakes, and shouts, and Jesse Edward Curry took the elevator up to the third floor feeling that he had never known a day like this and wouldn’t want to see another like it. As he stepped off at the third floor, he took a step and stopped. Ahead of him was a mass of male humanity jammed and murmuring. There were cameras, huge staring lights, and microphones.
Someone yelled: “Let the chief through!” and he bent his head and started toward his office, at the opposite end of the cross. Here and there he recognized a detective trying to buck the tide, working along the edge of glassy offices toward the elevator. Some men thrust microphones under the chief’s chin and yelled: “Come on. Give us a statement. Did he kill the President? Did he?”
Curry kept moving slowly toward his office. He passed Fritz’s Robbery and Homicide, but he couldn’t see over the tops of all the heads. He remembered General Order 81, and he recalled how well Glen King had cooperated with the press. But what the hell was this! This was insanity, madness, bedlam. This was an aggressive group of strangers gone berserk. They were taking over headquarters.
He fought his way to his office. There wasn’t time to look for messages. Cables were coming in thick and black over windowsills, curling across the floor and out into the hall. Curry saw Batchelor and Lumpkin, but they too were helpless. The chief learned that a policeman had had to be posted at Fritz’s door to keep the press from crushing in on the interrogation itself.
Obviously police headquarters had been overrun by the press. The control points at elevators and staircase were worthless because the nation’s reporters were descending on Dallas with credentials, and the European journalists were en route. It was a time to make a decision. The word must come from Curry. The situation was so bad that he had but two choices: either call his reserves and have the press dispossessed from the third floor en masse or permit them to remain there and hope that the situation would improve.
Curry was a “cooperation” chief. Editors and writers can be venomous. The story of the assassination was now bigger than anything Dallas could remember; it would go down in history as one of the major stories of the twentieth century, possibly the most dramatic. If Curry threw them out, there would be wails and protests and phone calls from men in high places. The chief and his department could assume a defensive posture in the assassination. It had happened in his city. Dallas, which had done its best, could be charged with according the President token protection.
It would be a lie. But it could be written. It could gain credence. These were not local reporters, men whom Curry knew by their first names. They were from big city dailies and wire services in San Francisco and Seattle and Salem and New York, Omaha, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, Baltimore . . .
If Curry weighed the matter, he confided in nobody. This was a day for people to be shocked and stunned for one reason or another, and it was his turn. He could not believe what he saw in the hall, but he would do nothing about it. A word from Curry and the harassed police would have been delighted to order everybody off the floor. A press room could have been set up on the first floor, where the courts and the traffic violations bureau were through with their work. Captain King could have reported to the press every half hour or every hour. He could have given them whatever Curry and Fritz wanted to tell. The reporters would have more space to set up their portable typewriters, their telephones. The photographers could have been allowed to see and photograph the suspect at the successive lineups which would be held several times for witnesses today.
There would be no scoops, no newsbeats. A sergeant and four officers could have maintained order on the first floor. But the word never came. The chief wanted to be a “good guy” and he was. But the press always had trouble spelling the word gratitude. It took what it wanted; it hanged whom it pleased; it unmanned officials who stood in its way.
Curry left his office and fought his way to the Homicide Bureau. The situation was intolerable. The chief couldn’t understand men who were shouting in his ear. He got to Fritz’s office and went by the cop at the door and inside to see what the captain was doing.
He looked at the prisoner, who looked up from his chair at the corner of the desk. Then he nodded to Fritz and the others. Curry’s stomach began to sicken. This, too, was all wrong. This was no way to interrogate a prisoner. The proper way was to have him alone in a quiet room, with perhaps one other person—a witness or an interested party. He looked at the Secret Service men, including Inspector Thomas J. Kelley, the two men from the FBI, the Texas Rangers lounging against a wall, and two detectives from the Homicide Bureau. There was barely room to stand in the office. The air seemed to have left the place.
The chief of police looked at the young man with the bruise over one eye and a small laceration under the other. He didn’t look like much, to have caused such a commotion. Curry left the office without asking a question.
The most positive person was Mrs. Marguerite Oswald. She had the righteously folded face of a woman who knows her rights. She arrived in Dallas dry-eyed. If there were tears for her son, she was saving them. Behind the glittering eyeglasses, her gaze was as steady as the flight of a bullet. She said she did not wish to speak to the police. She would not speak to them if she was brought into their presence. The custard jowls shimmered with determination. “I want to speak to the FBI,” she said.
People by the thousands all over the world may have wept, may have wrung their hands at this time. Many who were totally unrelated to the crime were overcome by hysteria and could not continue their tasks. This woman dominated everything within her purview. All her life she had fought for a foot or two of living space, and the enormity of this crime, even the possibility that her son might be charged with it, would not alter her loud and indignant attitude toward the world.
She had dominated her husbands. She had dominated her sons. Marguerite was easily affronted and could nourish pain for a long time. The husbands, one by one, had died or divorced her. The oldest son, John Edward Pic, lived in Staten Island, New York, and did not communicate with her. The second one, Robert Edward Lee, Jr., lived in nearby Denton. She had not seen him in a year. The baby, Lee, had left her to run off to Russia. Marguerite had made trips to Washington, demanding to see highly placed officials, because her Lee had changed his mind and desired to come home. It was not a poor mother’s duty to bring him back. That was the government’s job. He had served his country as a United States marine. He had been overseas in the Far East. If, in Moscow, he had demanded the right to renounce his American citizenship, it had nothing to do with his present frame of mind, which was to come home with his Russian bride and their baby.
Marguerite Oswald was taken to a room where she was introduced to two men. They said they were FBI agents, although they showed no I.D. cards. Strangely they had the same name: Brown. Mrs. Oswald said she had something important to tell them—something they should know before this assassination investigation got out of hand. “I want to talk with you gentlemen,” she said, sitting, “because I feel like my son is an agent of the government, and, for the security of my country, I don’t want this to get out.”
The men glanced at each other. They appeared to be shockproof. “I want to talk to FBI agents from Washington,” she said. One of them nodded. “Mrs. Oswald, we are from Washington.” The lady wasn’t certain that these were the right men. “I understand you work with Washington,” she said, “but I want officials from Washington.” They told her that she had the right men. “I do not want local FBI men,” she said. Her manner bespoke one who wants to reveal a hyper-secret which will climax the events of the day.
“Well,” one of the Mr. Browns said, “we work through Washington.” This did not mollify Mrs. Oswald. “I know you do,” she said, pursing her lips and staring candidly at them. “I would like Washington men.” The conversation ground to a geographical stalemate. They were not quite from Washington but they would not produce FBI agents who were.
She decided to tell them who she was. Mrs. Oswald, as was her right, always emphasized her mother role. Throughout her life, when minor debates appeared to be lost because of logic, she often said: “I am a mother. You do not know how a mother feels. . . .” The lady got a lot of mileage from pathos.
“For the security of the country,” she said at last, “I want this kept perfectly quiet until you investigate.” They nodded rapidly. “I happen to know that the State Department furnished the money for my son to return back to the United States, and I don’t know, if that would be made public, what that would involve, and so please will you investigate this and keep this quiet.” They looked at each other as though they weren’t certain what weight to apply to the statement. The money of which she spoke had been lent to Oswald on his plea that he was broke. He had promised to repay the State Department, and he had, to the last penny.
“Congressman Jim Wright knows about this,” Marguerite Oswald said. She also gave them the names of four officials of the State Department whom she had badgered to help her son. The two Browns left her. They thanked her and said they would contact Washington. She might have added that her son Lee, on his return from the Soviet Union, had protested a dishonorable discharge from the United States Marine Corps. He had addressed this demand for a hearing to the Secretary of the Navy, who was John Connally. Mrs. Oswald did not mention this, although it seemed to some outsiders that Oswald’s protest had merit, inasmuch as he had served his hitch in the Marines honorably and had earned an honorable discharge. What he did afterwards as a defector to the Soviet Union occurred after his military service.
Marguerite Oswald had given the FBI something to think about. In a little while she left for Dallas Police Headquarters. She wanted to see her boy.