Murder Tales: The JFK Conspiracies Page 8

  2.50 p.m. At the Dallas Police Headquarters, Police Chief Jessie Curry was having a disheartening conversation with the District Attorney. Curry had just received test results from Dr. W. E. Barnes; who had taken swabs from Oswald’s hands and right cheek, and had performed a paraffin test upon these samples. In this test paraffin was applied to the skin, which caused skin pores to dilate and any chemical substances held in the pores, such as the nitrates from gunpowder, to ooze out. If Oswald had fired a firearm in the last few hours, the paraffin test would tell the police. The test proved positive for Oswald’s hands and negative for his cheek. It looked like Oswald had fired a handgun that day, but the test seemed to indicate he hadn’t pressed a rifle to his face to look down a telescopic scope. On top of this; the police were getting frustrated with Oswald, he wasn’t answering their questions quick enough, Chief Curry, later commented, ‘One would think Oswald had been trained in interrogation techniques, and resisting interrogation techniques’. District Attorney William Alexander garnered the same impression as he watched Oswald being interviewed, ‘I was amazed that a person so young would have had the self-control he had. It was almost as if he had been rehearsed or programmed to meet the situation he found himself in’. Realising that they were getting nowhere with the obstinate Oswald, Chief Curry commented to the District Attorney that, ‘We don’t have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle’. Soon after this conversation with Curry; District Attorney Henry Wade would tell the press waiting for news on the Presidential assassination in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters that, ‘Preliminary reports indicate that more than one person was involved in the shooting’.

  At the same moment that Jessie Curry was postulating on the lack of evidence they had on Oswald, James Hosty was arriving at the Dallas Police Headquarters. As he walked through the basement car park, Hosty saw a local officer he was acquainted with, Lieutenant Jack Revill. Revill was stunned by what Hosty told him, so stunned it physically enraged Revill, and heated words were exchanged between the two men. After the argument, which lasted for only a few moments, Revill immediately ran up to his office and fired out a hasty memo, which was then released to the press with even more haste; before the ink had even dried on the page. The controversial memo read:

  ‘Re: Lee Harvey Oswald

  On November 22, 1963, at approximately 2:50 P.M., the undersigned officer met Special Agent James Hosty of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the basement of the City Hall.

  At that time Special Agent Hosty related to this officer that the Subject was a member of the Communist Party, and that he was residing in Dallas.

  The Subject was arrested for the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit and is a prime suspect in the assassination of President Kennedy.

  The information regarding the Subject’s affiliation with the Communist Party is the first information this officer has received from the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding same.

  Agent Hosty further stated that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was aware of the Subject and that they had information that this Subject was capable of committing the assassination of President Kennedy’.

  Within minutes of Curry receiving the memo it was being sent to news agencies around the world, the FBI top brass were furious. Ken Howe telephoned Chief Curry demanding that he withdraw the statement immediately. Within minutes of the statement being given to the press, a retraction was issued. Chief Curry had acted just in time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald’s name from reaching the public, for a few more minutes at least, but the genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

  At 3.00 p.m. the news finally reached Air Force One that a suspect had been arrested for the murder of a Dallas Police Officer, but that the man also matched the description of a suspect seen holding a rifle in the window of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The suspects name was Lee Harvey Oswald. Johnson was told that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a defector, living in Russia for nearly two years. Johnson’s heart sank the moment he heard that news. If the public became aware that a Communist agitator with Soviet sympathies was responsible for murdering the President then public pressure for him to retaliate against Russia, regardless of whether they had sanctioned the assassination or not, could become insurmountable. Johnson immediately asked for assurances that Oswald was not a Russian spy; by the time Air Force One landed, Johnson had been given those assurances by McGeorge Bundy and Colonel Oliver Hallett. Less than four hours after the assassination, with the investigation into the Presidents’ murder in its infancy, already the official case was being made for Oswald being a lone gunman.

  At 3.10 p.m. the press were finally given permission to broadcast the suspect’s name, the name Lee Harvey Oswald was now destined to go down in infamy. The press were very careful not to circulate any of the information that was contained in the memo they had been given by the police just twenty minutes earlier. As a result, for the moment, none of the pressmen told their newsrooms that Oswald was a possible communist defector. With no political ideologies for the editors in the newsrooms to pin upon Oswald, it helped the newsrooms to start putting the simple lone disaffected nutter spin on the Oswald’s story, a spin that the Whitehouse so desperately wanted disseminating. Everything seemed to be coming together perfectly for the official explanation.

  As President Johnson and his staff looked into Lee Harvey Oswald’s chequered past, Jackie Kennedy sat quietly with Kenny O’Donnell. He poured them both a large scotch each. Jackie Kennedy politely refused, ‘I’ve never had a Scotch in my life’, she told O’Donnell, but O’Donnell was insistent, placing the glass in her trembling hand and replying, ‘Now is as good a time to start as any’. This was the beginning of several hours drinking undertaken by the Kennedy Camp, a drinking session which only fuels the animosity the previous administration were feeling towards the newly inaugurated President Johnson.

  At 3.54 p.m. NBC News was the first television news broadcaster to announce Lee Harvey Oswald’s name to the nation, stating categorically that he was the ‘prime suspect’ in the President’s assassination.

  In his grief; Robert Kennedy hastily set out to try and find the truth behind his brother’s assassination. He began to telephone his contacts in the intelligence services, and some less than desirable contacts he had from his numerous prosecutions of underworld kingpins. He telephoned Julius Draznin; a nationwide renowned expert on organised crime and the corruption within the national unions. He asked Draznin as a personal favour to squeeze all of his sources and see if there was any talk of the mafia being involved in his brother’s murder. He contacted Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Assistant Secretary of Labour, and asked him to investigate the possibility of Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters Union having been involved in the assassination, possibly with the assistance and financial backing of the Secret Service. After some difficulty Robert Kennedy also managed to track down one of the major players in the Bay of Pigs invasion, a Cuban exile by the name of Enrique ‘Harry’ Ruiz Williams. The conversation between Williams and Robert Kennedy descended into a slanging match of angry words, and Robert stunned his friends to silence as he lost his temper and screamed down the phone at Williams, ‘One of your guys did it!’

  In Dallas the small time hoodlum and strip club owner Jack Ruby had left the Parkland Memorial Hospital; and made his way to the Dallas Police Headquarters. Somehow he got past the police guards and security cordons and began to hang around the corridors of the Murder Bureau, masquerading as a journalist, even getting himself pulled into a group photograph of the collected pressmen that one of the photographers took for posterity. Ruby was then seen by reporter Victor Robertson, attempting to enter the office of Captain John Will Fritz. A police officer stopped Ruby, and Robertson heard the officer say, ‘You can’t go in there Jack’. Ruby then had a quiet word with the policeman, Robertson could not hear what was said, but whatever it was; it made the policeman laugh, Ruby then walked off down the corridor with a confident swagger.

  4.35 p.m. Lee Ha
rvey Oswald took part in the first of four police line-ups. Helen Markham, one of the witnesses to the murder of Officer J. D. Tippit, picked Oswald out as the man she saw shooting Tippit, but with the caveat that she was not 100% certain that Oswald was the man she had seen. All three of the line-ups carried out on the afternoon and evening of Friday the 22nd of November 1963 came in for heavy criticism from outside observers, all of the men wore considerably smarter clothes than Oswald, all of the men were considerably older than Oswald, all of the men were considerably fatter than Oswald, and one of them had a fair complexion and Blonde hair. In the fourth line-up, held the following day, Oswald was forced to appear with two teenage boys; and a Mexican. It was made clear to the police by all of the witnesses who took part in each of the four line-ups; that they were only picking Oswald out as he was the closest in appearance to the men they had seen, but that he was not necessarily the same man. It then later became known that as each person standing in line during the identity parade had stood forward before the witnesses; they had given a fake name and occupation. Lee Harvey-Oswald had been instructed to give his real name and place of work. By the time of the line-ups, especially the ones later in the evening and on Saturday the 23rd of November, Oswald’s name and the location the sniper had allegedly fired from had been widely publicised, it is unlikely that the witnesses would not have heard this news and made the connections.

  At 5.58 p.m. eastern standard time, Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base, Washington D.C. Bobby Kennedy had asked that Jackie Kennedy’s disembarkation and the removal of President Kennedy’s coffin from the plane be a private affair. President Johnson refused this request; he wanted the press to be at Andrews Air Force Base; so that he could immediately address the public and temper their fears, to show the world that a seemingly seamless transition of power from one President to the next had occurred. To Bobby Kennedy this just seemed like another cruel slap in the face to his grieving family. Johnson planned out the perfect photo opportunity, President Kennedy’s coffin would be quietly removed from the back of Air Force One, and then he would be filmed and photographed by the waiting press caringly escorting the grieving Jackie Kennedy down the steps onto the runway. A fatherly figure, a figure the nation could trust to keep it safe in its darkest hour of need. Johnson didn’t count on a furious Bobby Kennedy being stood on the tarmac; waiting for Air Force One to come to a halt. As soon the stairway was put in place by the door; Bobby raced onto the plane. He pushed his way using brute force past everyone who tried to stop him or hinder his progress; he even shoved President Johnson out of the way without acknowledging his presence, all in his haste to reach his sister-in-law. Johnson was incensed by the breach of protocol, he almost blew a gasket in anger, to Johnson it didn’t matter that the Attorney-General’s brother had been murdered a few short hours before, protocol dictated that Bobby Kennedy should have stopped and paid his respects to the new President. Bobby Kennedy rallied the Kennedy Camp around him, he had Kennedy’s coffin taken out of the plane via the back exit, then quietly escorted Jackie out the back of the plane also. They were far enough away from the press to ignore their questions, yet close enough for the cameras to pick up Bobby tenderly holding his sister-in-laws hand in a genuine display of protective affection. All the while President Johnson skulked in the background, getting angrier and angrier; as Bobby Kennedy robbed him of his perfect photo opportunity, robbed him of the visual statement he was trying to make to the nation, neigh the world. As far as President Johnson was concerned Bobby Kennedy via his arrogance and petulant behaviour had just declared war on the Johnson administration. Unable to take his immediate anger out on Bobby Kennedy, Johnson turned on Secret Service agent Rufus Youngblood, screaming at him with balled fists for stupidly leaving his hat back in the motorcade in Dallas.

  At 6:19 p.m. after composing himself from his petulant and un-President like outburst of childish rage, President Johnson was left to disembark the plane with no political allies, sullenly he approached the waiting press, he was about to give his first public speech as President of the United States, a speech that had been carefully written and then rewritten for him on the flight from Dallas. He stood before the collected microphones; and in his thick harsh Texan accent he began to drawl, ‘This is a sad time for all people. We have suffered a loss that cannot be weighed. For me it is a deep personal tragedy. I know that the world shares the sorrow that Mrs Kennedy and her family bare. I will do my best, that is all I can do, I ask for your help, and gods’. Johnson then walked away from the microphones and cameras towards a waiting helicopter, and realised for the first time he would be taken to his new home, the Whitehouse, which for the moment he would also have to share with the family of his predecessor.

  The Kennedy’s had made their way to Bethesda Naval Hospital with the body of President Kennedy. It was Jackie’s request that the autopsy be carried out on a Naval Base; due to President Kennedy’s connection to that auspicious body of men. General Godfrey McHue, still loyal to the Kennedy camp, had abandoned Johnson, and now sat with the Kennedy’s. General McHue was still riled from his angry exchanges with the members of the Johnson Camp earlier that day, and McHue began to let off steam, telling Bobby Kennedy that Johnson had been rude, disrespectful and opportunistic. All in all Johnson’s behaviour in the wake of the President’s death had been a disgrace. Then others pitched in, like Kenny O’Donnell, angrily telling Bobby how Johnson had insisted on being sworn in before Kennedy’s body was even cold, telling everyone that it was on Bobby’s say so, that Bobby had practically ordered the impromptu inauguration. Grousing at how he had shamefully used the grieving Jackie Kennedy as a photo opportunity, how he’d made her stand almost catatonic beside him during the whole horrible and sordid ceremony. Then his virtual high-jacking of Air Force One; refusing to fly back to Washington on his allotted aircraft; Air Force Two. Johnson had practically shoved his disdain for President Kennedy down poor grieving Jackie’s throat. Suddenly the Kennedy Camp all realised the lies that Johnson had told to each of them that day, how Johnson had played each single person off the other so that he manoeuvred himself with unseemly alacrity and cold calculating efficiency into the Oval Office. ‘He’s got what he wants now. But we take it back in sixty-eight’, Kenny O’Donnell affirmed as he downed another in a long line of whiskies. As Bobby Kennedy listened; he became angrier and angrier with each knew revelation, and in those moments his dislike for Johnson became a fervent lifelong hatred. Hearing people repeat the events of the day, the shock began to suddenly catch-up with Jackie, and Dr. John Welsh diagnosed her with nervous exhaustion. Realising that she was on the verge of a dangerous emotional state; Dr. Walsh decided to inject Jackie with a sedative, Visatril, to calm her down. For some reason the shot seemed to have the opposite effect, Jackie seemed to become more alive and animated than at any time since her husband’s death. She began recounting in graphic detail what had happened to her in Dallas, reliving again and again the dreadful moment that President Kennedy had been shot. Seeing the strange effect the injection had on her; Dr. Walsh commented dryly, ‘I might as well have given her a shot of coca-cola’.

  During the helicopter ride from Andrews Air Force Base to the Whitehouse, Johnson began to discuss his fears that Kennedy was killed as part of an international conspiracy, a possible prelude to World War Three. Secretary of Defence James McNamara and the National Security Advisor George Bundy; both informed Johnson that there was no evidence that the President’s assassination was the first salvo in a larger darker operation. There had been no unusual military movements, or even rumours of anything untoward happening in either Russia or Korea. American Intelligence Assets in Berlin reported that factions on both sides of the political divide appeared as wrong footed by President Kennedy’s assassination as the American’s were. It appeared the soviets were also worried that the finger of suspicion would be pointed at them, and that tensions would rise between the two superblocks. Johnson’s fears allayed, a brief conversation arose
as to the message it would send out if Johnson were to move straight into the Whitehouse; whilst the Kennedy family still grieved in what was technically their home. There were arguments on both side, it would publically look better if Johnson gave the Kennedy’s some space, whereas others argued it was psychologically important for Johnson to surround and immerse himself in the trappings of supreme power straight away. When the helicopter landed on the south lawn of the Whitehouse at 6.30 p.m. Johnson made his final decision, he did not enter the Whitehouse, instead he crossed the lawn and went to a building hidden away to the rear of the Whitehouse, the Executive Offices; the location of the Vice-Presidential suite. As Johnson settled himself into his old office, the political machinations of Washington continued to turn even in the wake of President Kennedy’s cold blooded murder. Hubert Humphrey, Senator for Minnesota, approached Johnson and shamelessly sounded him out about filling the void that had been left in the Vice Presidential office. Quietly a deal was brokered, Humphreys would help Johnson during those first few turbulent weeks and months as President, help him to bust balls and tighten his grip on Capitol Hill, to help him get the Kennedy camp in line, and in return Humphrey’s would be his Vice-Presidential running mate in the 1964 elections. Washington truly never did stop to grieve.