Read Surrounded by Enemies Online
Authors: Bryce Zabel
Still grounded six miles northwest of the downtown on the tarmac at Love Field, Air Force One was a hotbed of paranoia. It was jammed full, with speculation of all manner underway. Vice President Johnson had arrived minutes before and was arguing with the assistant special agent in charge, Emory P. Roberts, who had taken over leadership duties for the Secret Service detail since Roy Kellerman was still in surgery at Parkland Memorial Hospital. Roberts was trying to get Johnson to leave the plane immediately but having no luck.
Seeing President Kennedy entering, Johnson pushed through the crowded plane to intercept him, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him close (the so-called “Johnson Treatment”). “It’s your goddamned friend Khrushchev,” he growled. “We may be at war. We need to get our heads together on this right now.” Calling the leader of the Soviet Union the United States President’s “friend” seemed inappropriate and revealing at the same time, but this was hardly the time to take offense.
Agent Roberts literally pulled Johnson away from Kennedy. His training made clear that no one is allowed to touch the President without permission, something that was particularly important under the existing conditions. The agent spoke directly to President Kennedy: “Mr. President, I’ve told the Vice President that he cannot be on this plane, that he must depart on Air Force Two. Particularly now that you are here, sir, we need you two separated to assure continuity of authority.” Looking between the President and the Vice President, the agent made his case crystal clear: “You can’t fly together. He needs to leave now.”
President Kennedy nodded to Johnson. “Lyndon, stay in Texas. I have to get back. People will need to see that happen.”
Johnson processed the political implications of sticking around Dallas surrounded by death and shame against the idea of returning to Washington to assure the continuity of the government. “Mr. President, that seems ill-advised.”
Kennedy leaned forward, collared Johnson somewhat more gently than Johnson had just collared him and so many others, pulled close to his ear and said, “We can’t fuck around here, Lyndon.”
Kennedy let go, and simply nodded to Roberts. Within seconds, Secret Service agents Jack Ready and Donald Lawton lifted a humiliated Lyndon Johnson almost off his feet and escorted him from the plane. Using a long-distance lens, AP photographer Ralph Philpott captured the scene. It was a necessary moment to secure national leadership but, to Lyndon Johnson, it always looked as if he was being treated like “a two-bit poker cheat.”
Indeed, in the time that followed, Johnson told practically anyone who would listen about this “ball-crushing” moment, confiding to them that this was when he knew his fate on the 1964 Democratic ticket was sealed. That Johnson would even be engaging in such political speculation on the day that the President of the United States had been targeted for murder is perhaps egocentric on his part. But the truth is that both Jack and Bobby Kennedy were thinking the same thing.
President Kennedy knew something else for certain while standing on that plane surrounded by key members of the government and his wife. He knew these men who had challenged him and tried to undermine his authority these past few years had crossed a line. And he knew he would make them pay.
News of the events out of Dallas rocketed around the world. Nothing since Pearl Harbor seemed to have touched the American nation as powerfully. This was the first true breaking news television event of the modern age, driving audiences to record numbers and beyond, both in the United States and abroad. And, as is true for all good television dramas, it had a hero people could root for and a villain they could jeer.
Inside the Dallas police building, the suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald was advised that anything he said could be used against him and that he was entitled to an attorney. He made several telephone calls seeking representation. He also spoke with the head of the Dallas Bar Association, who offered to find a lawyer for him. He declined, saying he preferred to secure one himself.
Under questioning, Oswald denied shooting Governor Connally, Agent Hill or Officer J.D. Tippit, a Dallas policeman found dead at the scene. He claimed he was eating lunch when the Dealey Plaza gunfire took place. When he was placed in a lineup, several eyewitnesses identified him as the man responsible for killing Tippit.
“I didn’t shoot anybody,” Oswald stated forcefully.
“Maybe it would be smart for you to come clean, Mr. Oswald. Maybe you don’t understand how much trouble you’re in,” Captain Will Fritz said. The Dallas Police Department veteran had been on duty at the Trade Mart when the shots were fired and immediately reported to Dealey Plaza, where he had been part of the team that had found a rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Police Chief Jesse Curry picked Fritz, who had a reputation as an effective interrogator, to speak to Lee Oswald first. “We’ve got witnesses who saw you shoot a police officer. And we’ve got strong evidence that you shot the governor and the Secret Service man, too. Those are all capital crimes. If you’re convicted, you’ll go to the electric chair.”
Although no stenographer was present at those early interrogations and no tape recorder was used, police officer Dan Selkirk took notes. These were later compared to a report written afterwards by Captain Fritz, who noted that Oswald, already pale, turned “white as a sheet” when the death penalty was mentioned. Nevertheless, the suspect repeated, “I didn’t do any of that stuff, so what can I say about it?”
“Why would you want to kill the President of the United States?” Fritz asked, ignoring his plea of innocence.
Lee Harvey Oswald refused to answer any further questions during that session. While trying to lead the suspect to his secure location for safekeeping, two Dallas cops unwittingly led him into a sea of reporters instead. The scene, already chaotic, became threatening to the physical safety of the prisoner as well as the news reporters and the officers.
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’s Steve Berkowitz, a reporter with just three years' experience, was covering his first major news event for the magazine. No shrinking violet, Berkowitz summoned his most authoritative voice to rise above the cacophony: “Did you do it, Mr. Oswald?”
Oswald stopped, allowing the reporters clogging the hallway to quickly close ranks around him and the officers, trapping them for questions. He looked straight at Berkowitz and said, “I didn’t do anything except go to work today.”
“Was it your job to kill the President?” Berkowitz was not above using sarcasm to address his sources, a trait that had gotten him dressed down by both editors and press secretaries. In this case, however, it seemed more appropriate than usual.
“The truth on that matter will come out if they will let it, I assure you,” said Oswald, looking angry and offended. “But me? I’m just a patsy.”
Meanwhile, with President and Mrs. Kennedy in mid-flight, Bobby Kennedy was still working the phone feverishly from his Virginia home office. Although he rarely smoked, he had taken a stale pack of Kents from his drawer and was on his fifth cigarette. Like everyone else in America, he was watching the television and making his assessment of Oswald. The attorney general thought the alleged killer looked smaller than he had imagined, expecting his assassins big and threatening. RFK allowed himself a momentary smile. Of course, people often underestimated him as well.
Close on the heels of the Oswald proclamation of innocence, Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade put on his jacket, straightened his tie, and went out to the press area, where reporters and photographers and TV crews were standing mob vigil in the hallway outside, having been whipped into near-hysteria by Oswald’s walk-by. Wade started by acknowledging that there were already calls for turning the whole thing over to federal authorities. That was what the FBI agents in Washington, D.C. wanted.
“This crime may or may not have national implications, but it took place in Dallas,” Henry Wade declared. “We know how to prosecute murder down here, and I expect we can handle this case, wherever the facts take us.”
Asked why he should trump federal authority in an attack on the President of the United States, Wade replied, “The only public official who was murdered here earlier today was the governor, who was, last I checked, a Texas resident.”
Robert Kennedy could not believe what he was seeing. He hurled his ashtray across the room, furious that people from Lyndon Johnson’s home state were sticking their noses where they had no real business. He left for the White House to greet his brother.
When President Kennedy landed in Washington D.C., he felt compelled to respond to the rapidly changing story. Reporters had gathered near Air Force One, buzzing with the day’s news, oblivious to both the temperature and the chill wind. One of them,
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’s Frank Altman, noted how this story would have changed if the President were coming back in a casket. Then he reminded himself that if JFK had died that day, Texas authorities would not have released his body until they’d had a chance to perform an autopsy. Those were rules, almost universally respected.
Emerging from Air Force One with his wife Jacqueline, John Kennedy shrugged up his jacket. Both had on the same bloody clothes they had worn all day long, resolved that the nation and the guilty parties should face what had happened in Dallas.
So, looking more like he’d come in off a battlefield than a cross-country flight, Kennedy was uncharacteristically terse with the freezing press corps: “The government is secure. Our prayers are with the Connally, Hill and Tippit families. And, of course, agent Kellerman.” At this point, the President was supposed to walk away but instead went off his talking points, taking a question from the
Washington Post
’s Bart Barnes and replying: “I want whoever did this to know that last night was the last good night of sleep they’ll ever have.” It was angry and aggressive, spoken like a surrounded general, who had decided to fight rather than surrender.
As Kennedy moved toward a waiting limo,
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’s Altman maneuvered himself into a position directly in the President’s line of sight and shouted out the question on everyone's mind: “Mr. President! Does that mean you think someone besides this Oswald was involved?” Although softer-spoken than Berkowitz, Altman knew how to command attention.
Kennedy paused as if he hadn’t quite heard the question, buying time to decide the exact tenor of his answer: “We don’t know who is involved just yet. The attorney general is in contact with Mr. Hoover at the FBI. I presume that investigation has only just begun. Good night.” The President of the United States stiffly got into the limo, helped by a Secret Service agent. His presumption that the FBI was just beginning an investigation would soon be proven incorrect. In fact, the bureau was doing all it could to wrap up its investigation immediately.
In her testimony before the JCAAP hearings, the First Lady was asked what she and her husband talked about in the limousine ride to the White House. She replied that they did not speak, only that they had held hands.
According to the controversial entrance logs that were later subpoenaed and found to have been altered, President and Mrs. Kennedy arrived together at the White House at 8:39 p.m. EST on the night of November 22, 1963. Both were still wearing the same clothes they had worn all day long. Kennedy’s secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, in all her testimony given to multiple committees over time, always used the word “disturbing” to describe their appearance.
“I’m so very happy to see you both tonight, Mrs. Kennedy, Mr. President,” said Lincoln, re-directing to JFK. “The attorney general is waiting for you in the Oval Office.”
Kennedy kissed his wife goodnight. Lincoln overheard him saying, “I’ll be up late.” As the First Lady departed, Mrs. Lincoln asked the President if he was at last ready for a change of clothes. The President nodded his tired agreement, then entered his office on that cool evening, finding Bobby Kennedy looking at a bank of three televisions featuring the three TV network newscasts. Only Walter Cronkite — by now running on pure adrenaline — was audible. Bobby was monitoring CBS because the nation preferred that network’s news by big numbers; he wanted to hear what the people were hearing when they heard it.
JFK instantly picked up the conversation he and his brother had been having on the phone less than an hour after the shootings in Texas. When testifying two years later, Mrs. Lincoln had to be reminded of her oath twice before she could recall the President’s first shouted words, fired out as the door was still closing. “We have to hit back, Bobby,” said the President. “Whose side is Hoover on?”
Bobby Kennedy quickly turned, picking up a pencil from his brother’s desk. He scribbled on a notepad — “We can’t talk here!” — and held the message up for the President’s eyes. JFK stopped himself from responding and moved with his brother into a small side alcove adjacent to the Oval Office, a place where the President had been known to nap. It had the distinction of being the only room in the White House that was swept for electronic surveillance bugs on a daily basis. Aside from the outside portico, it was the most secure spot on the White House grounds, and it was warm. But as secure as it was, whenever you came into this room, you still whispered.
As they took seats across from each other, the oldest Kennedy brother characterized the attack in Dealey Plaza as a screw-up, one that should not distract from the obvious conclusion that someone had almost killed the President of the United States in broad daylight. The younger brother worried openly that the failure of that plan was already setting events in motion that threatened to tear apart the administration. Yet here the Kennedys were, locked up in the White House prison, where they were suddenly unsure who, if anyone, could be trusted. They would have to get word outside quickly and get some friendly shoes running down the details.
The brothers already knew, however, that they faced formidable enemies from the worlds of organized crime, Cuban freedom fighters, the FBI’s Hoover, an overtly hostile CIA, and the combative Joint Chiefs of Staff. Analyzing his position, JFK's gallows humor prevailed. “Well, Bobby,” said the President. “Based on this discussion, the question is not who would want to kill me but who wouldn’t.”
Immediate security improvements were ordered. Elevated to top priority was the need for every member of the Secret Service to be vetted for loyalty. Clearly, in the aftermath of Dallas, that organization was going to come in for the heaviest criticism ever, since its creation by Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Ironically, it came into existence on April 15 of that year, the same day that Lincoln himself had been assassinated. Its original mission of suppressing counterfeiting was not expanded to include presidential protection until the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901.
Maybe those agents reacted slowly in Texas for a reason, thought the attorney general, and if so, there could be someone armed, already close to President Kennedy, who would be willing to trade his life for the President’s. Lie detector tests were ordered and administered by military police officers flown in from Florida within twelve hours of the attack. In addition to the standard screening questions, Robert Kennedy instructed that all agents be asked, “Do you recognize John F. Kennedy as the legitimate leader of the United States government?”
They both knew the President would have to show his face publicly, and they decided that in the foreseeable future it would only be in a carefully controlled event like a news conference. There would be no more of what Bobby described with disgust as “that clusterfuck ambush Lyndon dragged you into.”
At that point, presidential secretary Lincoln patched FBI director Hoover through to Attorney General Kennedy, saying he was calling with an update that had been relayed to him by his agents on the ground in Dallas. After a short briefing, the exhausted Kennedy acidly pointed out to Hoover that the news he was hearing from the FBI was barely as comprehensive as what he was already hearing from Walter Cronkite. He hung up and read from his yellow legal pad, laying out what he’d heard about this suspect Oswald to Jack. “Ex-Marine. Lived in Russia from 1959 to 1962 — claimed to be a Marxist. Tried to renounce his citizenship but didn’t. Came back in June of ’62 with a Russian wife, Marina. Lived in New Orleans earlier this year — there’s a photo of him passing out leaflets for something called the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. That’s what they’ve got.”
The President indicated the televisions in the Oval Office itself. “They’ve been parading the son of a bitch all around Dallas. He says he’s innocent.”
The two men were silent for as much as a minute as they considered the possibilities, Cronkite’s voice continuing to summarize the same basic fact set. When they were together, with no one else, the brothers would often sit in long silences while thinking, knowing that the first one of them who had something important to say would say it. Finally, the attorney general offered his assessment, “It’s better for the White House at this point if Oswald keeps his mouth shut.”
That led to another thirty minutes of terse back-and-forth, toward the end of which Bobby took note of the dark circles formed under his brother’s nearly closed eyes. He knew tomorrow would be another tough day in a presidency already full of tough days. He ordered the President off to bed and received no argument. For years, Robert Kennedy’s own recollection of these events remained a mystery, as he cited executive privilege and attorney-client privilege and refused to furnish investigators with any information, despite ultimately being cited for contempt. His recently released notes are full of the kind of specific detail that forms the basis of this reporting.
Before retiring himself, however, the equally exhausted younger brother balled up the paper that he’d been nervously folding and unfolding during the recent conversation and tossed it into the wastebasket. The paper that said, “We can’t talk here!” in his own tightly scribbled and recognizable handwriting.
That single piece of twenty-four-pound, antique laid paper with a presidential seal watermark would be collected the next morning by Francis Mullen of the White House janitorial staff and kept as a memento of the day President John F. Kennedy was nearly killed. Although neither Kennedy brother knew it at the time, Bobby had created Exhibit 517, so described and numbered by the Senate and House staff lawyers for the Joint Committee on the Attempted Assassination of the President, or JCAAP.
Bobby Kennedy’s written exclamation raised a compelling question. What did the President of the United States and the attorney general have to talk about that was so secret it couldn’t be discussed in the Oval Office itself?
The question had many answers, each one raising another set of questions. None of the questions was as succinct as the one that President Kennedy was asked when he arrived in the upstairs family quarters, where he found the First Lady still awake, sitting in the near-dark. Her bloody pink dress was thrown on the floor, along with her pillbox hat, and she was wearing a bathrobe with her hair wrapped in a towel. The ashtray was full of L&Ms that she’d been chain-smoking, and she was drinking an uncharacteristic glass of Scotch. She removed the towel and shook her hair out. Her question was heart-achingly simple: “Why do they want to kill you, John? What have you done?”