Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies Page 7

  1.35 p.m. Lee Harvey Oswald was seen acting suspiciously in the entrance to Hardy’s Shoe Shop, on Jefferson Boulevard. Store manager Johnny Brewer was convinced that Oswald was trying to avoid being seen by the police patrols that were swamping the area. When Oswald left the shop after a circling police-patrol had passed by, Brewer followed Oswald, and observed him entering a nearby cinema called the Texas Theatre. The cinemas cashier, Julia Postal, noticed Oswald slip into the auditorium without paying, but not before buying himself a bucket of popcorn. Brewer had by now entered the theatre himself; and told Postal about Oswald’s strange behaviour; between them they decided to telephone the police, whereupon Julia Postal confidently told the operator without equivocation, ‘We have your man’. By 1.45 p.m. the police were arriving at the Texas Theatre in force. They began to quietly enter the auditorium, moving their way silently down the aisles. Johnny Brewer unlocked and opened a door hidden behind the cinema screen, a door that led to the alleyway behind the cinema; several more police officers enter the building this way. Brewer noted that all the police officers who entered from the alleyway already had their guns drawn. Out of the sixteen police officers filling the cinema; it was Officer Nick McDonald who finally approached Lee Harvey Oswald. McDonald was so bold because the arrest was personal to him; J. D. Tippit had been one of his closest friends. McDonald allegedly pistol-whipped Oswald in his seat; and began yelling to the suspect that he had murdered his best friend. Oswald fumbled for his pistol, he got it out of his waistband and actually squeezed the trigger, but luckily the gun misfired, and as more of the officers swamped him they managed to manhandle the pistol from his hand. Oswald was then bundled out into the foyer of the cinema and pushed into a restroom; where the police attempted to clean the blood from the assault off of his face, before taking him to the Dallas Police Headquarters. As Officers Hawkins, Hutson, Walker, Carroll and Hill escorted the suspect out of the cinema; Julia Postal clearly heard one of the officers refer to the man as Oswald, another officer informed Julia Postal that her suspicions were correct, the police, ‘have our man on both counts’.

  At 1.50 p.m. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson arrived back at Love Field Airport where Air Force One was waiting. He rushed onto the plain and after having all the blinds pulled down; in case there were any lurking snipers, he immediately turned on the television news. It became clear to Johnson and the Secret Service officers at his side that the television reporters knew more about the details of the President’s assassination than they did. This infuriated Johnson; and it also began sending him down a paranoid road of thought, if he was going to spend the next three hours flying from Dallas to Washington; then what machinations would happen behind his back? Would Bobby Kennedy attempt to seize power in his absence? The Vice Presidential role was largely ceremonial. It was in the words of one former Vice President ‘not worth a bucket of warm piss’. No one ever expected circumstances to arise where Johnson would actually take the Presidency one day. Now unbelievable circumstances had arisen to thrust the power onto Johnson, power that he so unbelievably wanted. Johnson began to dwell on the fact that Bobby Kennedy, an arrogant upstart, would try and take that opportunity for greatness from him. After all there were no hard and fast rules to the line of Presidential succession in the absence of an election. Of course if he could take the Presidential oath quickly enough; his position would be legally binding, and there would be nothing that Bobby Kennedy or anyone else could do about it. Johnson in response to these paranoid thoughts began to set in motion an unstoppable chain of unprecedented events.

  Back at Parkland Hospital another unbelievable set of events were occurring; which would have been almost comical if they weren’t so tragic. The President’s body had been loaded into a coffin, and the Secret Service intended to escort the President’s body and Jackie Kennedy back to Air Force One. Dr. Earl Rose refused to release the body into their custody, an autopsy had yet to be conducted, and an argument began to brew. Dr. Rose called a Sherriff to help back him up. The Sheriff reiterated the central prescient legal point, telling the Secret Service that state law determined that because the President had been murdered in Texas, the autopsy had to be carried out in Texas. The body was now technically evidence in a murder investigation, and therefore could not leave the state. Suddenly the exchange between the Secret Service and the Sheriff began to get heated; Dr. Rose had by now also called the hospital administrator; who began to get involved, all were telling the Secret Service agents the same thing, that they could not take the President’s body, it was illegal for them to even try. Then a local judge was called by the hospital administrator, Justice of the Peace Theron Ward arrived to wade into the escalating war of words. Judge Ward ordered the Secret Service men to leave the body where it was, then he said the worst thing imaginable under the circumstances, he didn’t care who was in the coffin, it was ‘just another murder case’ as far as he was concerned. This infuriated Kenny O’Donnell, enough was enough, suddenly a full on fist fight broke out between the hospital staff, the Sheriffs, the Secret Service and the young judge, fists flew, people were pushed and shoved and a Sheriff was knocked to the floor, as the Secret Service literally body snatched the President’s corpse. As they began to rush down the corridor away from the beaten officials, a priest stepped into the path of the coffin, and began to pray over it. As far as O’Donnell and the Secret Service were concerned this was just a another delaying tactic, trying to hold them up until police reinforcement arrived, and that’s when an unnamed Secret Service officer stupidly pulled a gun on the priest. The stunned padre sensibly stepped aside. All the while Jackie Kennedy stood silently by, stirring dumbfounded at the grotesque pantomime that unfolded before her. Eventually the Secret Service men broke away from the encroaching Sherriff’s and hospital officials; and a mad dash ensued through the corridors of the hospital, with the Secret Service agents and Jackie Kennedy running hell for leather until they reached the hearse that was waiting for them outside. They loaded up the President’s body, bundled Jackie into the back of the hearse and sped off for Love Field Airport.

  On the Drive to Dallas Police Headquarters; Lee Harvey Oswald was noted as being ‘extra calm. He wasn’t a bit excited or nervous’. He did however protest his arrest, telling the police officers, ‘I don’t know why you are treating me like this. The only thing I have done was carry a pistol into a movie’. The officers asked Oswald why he had killed Officer Tippit, but Oswald remained tight lipped, stating cryptically, ‘you can only fry’, for killing a police officer.

  At 2.00 p.m. Defence Secretary Robert McNamara was in the middle of a budget meeting in the Pentagon. Despite the Pentagon being informed by the Whitehouse that McNamara was now the Commander In Chief, no one had had the decency to tell the man in charge of America’s defensive abilities and strategies that President Kennedy had been shot; and that the Whitehouse believed he was now in charge of the nation. If the assassination had been a prelude to war, one of America’s key players in any strategic decision would have been totally in the dark during that crucial first hour. McNamara was asked to leave the meeting to deal with an ‘urgent private call’, that call was from Robert Kennedy; he informed McNamara that President Kennedy was dead. McNamara was left numb by the phone call, shocked, and by his own admission not knowing what to do, ineffectually he returned to the budget meeting to conclude its dreary business.

  Shortly after 2.00 p.m. the police car carrying Lee Harvey Oswald arrived at the Dallas Police Headquarters. Already reporters had crowded into the basement car park of the City Hall, where the police HQ was based. Surprisingly these reporters were allowed to follow the escorting police officers up through the elevator; into the Police Headquarters; and film and photograph Oswald as he was taken down the twenty feet of corridor into the Homicide Bureau offices, where he was left to sit in a corridor waiting to be interviewed.

  At the same time that Oswald was being taken into the police station to be questioned, the reporters at the Texas School
Book Depository were treated to yet another rifle being discovered on the premises, this one allegedly being found on the eastern fire escape. Once again it was different to the others that have been paraded before the press, this rifle quite clearly wasn’t bolt action like the Mannlicher Carcano, it was also a lot shorter and stockier than the Carcano allegedly used by Oswald. Unlike the previous rifles, which the police could easily state were Oswald’s Mannlicher Carcano misidentified, this weapon could in no way be explained away in such a cavalier manner. The official if rather implausible explanation was that the rifle belonged to a security agent who had carelessly left his weapon on a fire escape during the search of the building.

  Back at Air Force One, at 2.06 p.m. Johnson’s paranoia got the better of him; and he decided to telephone Bobby Kennedy and see what he was conspiring. It was Johnson’s plan to try and get Bobby Kennedy’s blessing for Johnson to take the oath of allegiance before Air Force One took off from Love Field Airport. Johnson wanted to officially and legally be President before the plane had left the tarmac. Johnson began to fire questions at Bobby, who was remember; the Attorney General, and as a result the highest ranking legal authority in the country. Just who could legally administer the oath of office? Did certain words have to be spoken for it to be legally binding? What did the constitution require to happen to make the swearing in of a new President legal? Bobby was quietly enraged, it had been less than half an hour since he had found out about his brother’s death, and now he discovered that before his brother’s body was even cold; someone was looking to figuratively slip into his shoes. Feeling that this showed that Johnson was too eager for power, and therefore probably the least suitable person to have it; Bobby tried to stall Johnson, telling him that he would have to check the facts with the Vice-Attorney General. Once he had put down the receiver Johnson decided that he would commence with his Presidential duties, liaising with the National Security Advisor. As Johnson spoke with the NSA, Bobby Kennedy was patched into the phone call. Johnson would tell people later that it was during this conversation that Bobby Kennedy persuaded him that it would be in the countries best interests if Johnson were to swear the oath of allegiance whilst in Dallas, and become the thirty-sixth President of the United States of America as quickly as possible. Bobby Kennedy vehemently denied this version of events, and insisted that it was Johnson who kept insisting that he should be sworn in as President with indecent haste.

  At 2.14 p.m. as Jackie Kennedy, Kenny O’Donnell and the Secret Service agents boarded Air Force One. Kenny O’Donnell left Jackie’s side to give her some time alone; once he was gone Johnson came out of his hiding place. He took Jackie by the hand and gave her his condolences, then with barely a visible gearshift in the conversational tone; he informed the grieving widow that Bobby, the President’s own brother, wanted Johnson to be sworn in as soon as possible. The very presence of Johnson on Air Force One was a shock to the Kennedy camp; they had assumed that they would have some privacy on the Presidential plane, to grieve in private for a few hours before the media glare of Washington. Now they discovered that Lyndon B. Johnson, a man the culled President’s family despised, would be sharing in that grief, and not only that, he was hassling them for the keys to the Whitehouse before Jackie Kennedy had even had time to wash her husband’s blood off her hands, literally. It would have been easy for Johnson to make his way back to Washington by himself; after all he’d gotten to Dallas on Air Force Two. It was therefore no hardship for him to tootle across the runway; and get on the sister plane and fly back with his own entourage, leaving the Kennedy’s for a few sacrosanct hours. Kenny O’Donnell had missed the meeting with Johnson as he boarded, as he went straight to General Godfrey McHue, the senior military figure on Air Force One. O’Donnell ordered McHue to get the plane off the ground; O’Donnell was still scared that the Dallas authorities would muster up the courage to order them to take the President’s body off the plane, so time was of the essence. Captain James Swindell, the pilot of Air Force One, refused the order from McHue. McHue was flabbergasted by the dissention, and he ran straight up to the cockpit. Here in a heated exchange Swindell apologised to McHue, but, he informed the General, he couldn’t accept the order; as Matt Kilduff had given him explicit instruction not to leave the tarmac. General McHue then frantically ran up and down the plane looking for the Presidential press secretary. When General McHue found Kilduff and asked him why he’d ordered that Air Force One not take off, Kilduff dropped the bombshell that Vice-President Johnson was on board; and had ordered that he be sworn into office as President of the United States of America, on Air Force One, before the plane left the tarmac. General McHue was now deeply confused, he was meant to be in charge of Air Force One, and no one had told him that Johnson had boarded, indeed as far as General McHue was concerned Johnson should have been on board the sister plane, Air Force Two. McHue’s temper and loyalty to President Kennedy now boiled over, he pushed Kilduff into a corner and pointed an angry finger into the room where Kennedy’s coffin lay, and in an angry yell he hollered, ‘My President is back there in that box!’ The angry words from the General echoed through the confines of the plane, and reached the ears of Johnson. This exchange upset Jackie Kennedy, who subsequently went to sit alone beside her husbands’ coffin. After a few minutes; Lady Bird Johnson entered the room where Jackie sat in silent contemplation, ‘You know we never even wanted to be Vice-President’. Lady Bird said with all the tact and decorum people had come to expect from the Johnsons, ‘and now, dear god, it’s come to this’. She concluded. As Lady Bird left the room Jackie Kennedy began to weep.

  Meanwhile elsewhere in the shadows and baking heat of the confined plane; Johnson himself was busy sidling up to the members of the Kennedy camp and worm-tonguing into their ears that this wasn’t his doing, that it was Bobby Kennedy’s idea, that Bobby was the one who insisted that Johnson be sworn in before they left Dallas. Then Johnson accosted Major General Chester V. Clinton and asked him if there was a photographer on board, he wanted his long awaited moment of triumph recorded forever for the history books.

  At 2.20 p.m. Dr. Kemp Clarke and Dr. Malcolm Perry held a press conference at Parkland Memorial Hospital. During this slightly comedic press conference, where the press constantly kept asking the doctors for the correct spelling of medical words, and even on several occasions to explain the meaning of none medical words, Dr. Perry eventually stated on three separate occasions that the wound in President Kennedy’s throat had been an entrance wound from a bullet. He then went further to tell the press that the bullet ‘appeared to be coming at him’. Dr. Clarke then explained that it was impossible to tell if the massive head wound was an entrance or exit wound as too much of the skull had been missing to make a clear judgement.

  At 2.30 p.m. just two hours after the fatal shots had rang out across Dealey Plaza, Judge Sarah T. Hughes arrived on board Air Force One to deliver the oath of office to Johnson. Judge Hughes was an old friend of the Johnson’s, and he wanted the judge to share in his moment of bitter triumph. As he was about to take his oath, Johnson stopped and turned to Kenny O’Donnell and said gruffly, ‘Ask Mrs Kennedy to come stand here’, Johnson hiked a thumb to his side. O’Donnell stirred at Johnson in cold disbelief; and informed Johnson as politely as his anger would allow that he couldn’t possibly be thinking of asking a woman who had just watched her husband be gunned down in front of her face, to come and watch a man she hated take her husband’s place. O’Donnell point blank refused to fetch Jackie Kennedy, but Johnson insisted. He wanted Jackie to stand silently beside him as he was sworn into office as the President of the United States of America; he wanted Jackie in those photographs to give his indecently hasty grab for power the sheen of legitimacy for future generations, and Jackie complied. She can be seen in those photographs, her face ashen, her eyes almost dead and emotionless, as she watches the proceedings, still wearing clothes soaked with her husband’s blood, still wearing the gloves saturated in her husband’s brain matter. Yet
she was gallant about this shameless political manipulation of her grief, and stated that being there stood next to Johnson in the wake of her husband’s death was ‘the least I could do’. So at 2.38 p.m. on Friday the 22nd of November 1963; drunken, vote rigging, unpopular Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the thirty-sixth President of the United States of America.

  FBI Agent James Hosty was at the Dallas Field Office compiling a list of local right wing suspects who may have played a part in the President’s assassination. Hosty’s boss, Ken Howe, called Hosty into his office and informed him that Lee Harvey Oswald had been arrested for murdering J. D. Tippit. Hosty collapsed into a nearby chair, Hosty had been the agent assigned to investigate Oswald, as Oswald had been a failed defector, moving to Russia for two years; before coming back to America with his tail between his legs; and a new Russian bride. Howe asked to see Oswald’s file, but Hosty’s heart sank even further when he discovered that the file on the possible murderer was missing from his filing cabinet. A search of the entire office was ordered, and the file was eventually discovered mysteriously hidden in the mail clerk’s office. After the files discovery Howe ordered Hosty to get to the Dallas Police Headquarters and sit in on Oswald’s interviews.

  At 2.46 p.m. Air Force One left Love Field Airport bound for Washington D.C. From the air, over a light lunch of soup and crackers, President Johnson began to organise the beginnings of his Presidency. The new First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson, went to her husband and suggested to him that it might be the right thing to do to call President Kennedy’s mother; and give her his condolences, President Johnson agreed. Rose Kennedy was well aware of the etiquette of the difficult situation, and what procedures were meant to happen upon the death of her son. To spare her feelings however Johnson had made sure he was announced on the phone by the telephonist simply as Mr Johnson, and he himself introduced himself to Rose Kennedy as plain and simple Mr Johnson, but Rose Kennedy was ahead of the game, and without prompting immediately called Johnson ‘Mr President’. Johnson informed Rose Kennedy that he and Lady Bird were, ‘grieving with you’. Rose Kennedy; showing her skills as a supreme diplomat said, ‘I know you loved Jack, and he loved you’, yet anyone who knew anything about the two men knew they really despised each other. Yet these words did something to President Johnson, perhaps they hit a raw nerve that had become exposed in the immediacy of President Kennedy’s death, for the hardened embattled embittered career Politician broke down into tears and had to hand the telephone over to his wife. Johnson excused himself from his cohorts and went to one of the planes restrooms, a few minutes later General McHue found Johnson ‘hiding’ in the toilet cubical, he was audibly muttering to himself, ‘Conspiracy, conspiracy, they’re after all of us’.