Authors: Lamar Waldron
between the White House and Dallas in an effort to rein in public com-
ments and legal action that could launch an outcry for action against
Cuba or the Soviet Union. Earlier that evening, the Dallas Assistant
District Attorney, Bill Alexander, had talked about filing charges against
Oswald for murdering JFK “as part of an international communist
conspiracy.”26 Reports like that quickly reached Washington, alarming
President Lyndon Johnson, now at the White House. Given the constant
stream of TV news coverage on all three networks, much of it from
Dallas, LBJ knew that one inflammatory statement on live TV by an
official in Texas could generate demands for retaliation that could be
hard for a new president to resist.
On the night of November 22, an LBJ aide placed urgent calls to Texas
Attorney General Carr, US Attorney Sanders, Dallas District Attorney
Wade, and Police Chief Curry. Author Larry Hancock says the message
was the same in each case: “Avoid any official statements, charges, or
discussion relating to conspiracy” that involved Russia, Cuba, or inter-
national communism.27 DA Wade later said that “President Johnson’s
aide called me three times from the White House that Friday night. He
said that President Johnson felt any word of a conspiracy—some plot
by foreign nations to kill President Kennedy—would shake our nation
to its foundation.” Hancock notes that “the FBI also moved quickly to
bring pressure on Chief Curry to retract statements . . . that Oswald was
known to be a Communist and potentially dangerous.”28 Curry agreed,
though it would be a constant struggle for Hoover to limit Curry’s public
statements about the case. Curry had easily grasped that the FBI wanted
the public to know that Oswald was guilty, but he appeared to have
trouble understanding why Hoover’s usually rabidly anticommunist
FBI didn’t want him or anyone else to imply that Cuba, Russia, or com-
munism was behind Oswald’s actions.
Both Hoover and LBJ knew how carefully public statements and
the media had to be managed as the national and international press
converged on Dallas. Numerous reporters, who would later become
famous, first received national notice in Dallas, sometimes becoming
part of the story. We’ve already mentioned Dan Rather, but his succes-
sor as anchor of
CBS Evening News,
Bob Schieffer, also received his big
break that day. As a reporter for the
Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
Shieffer not
only gave Oswald’s mother a ride to Dallas; he escorted her into police
headquarters. Peter Jennings from Canada was there, and in addition
to the earlier mentioned Robert MacNeil, his later partner on PBS, Jim
Lehrer, was also covering JFK’s murder, as a reporter for the
Dallas Times-
Herald.
National anchors like Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, and Walter
Cronkite held down the fort in New York and Washington; indeed,
Cronkite’s performance on November 22 and throughout the follow-
ing days propelled him to the legendary status he soon attained.
Unfortunately, the fact that so many careers were launched that day
helped to stifle serious journalistic investigation of JFK’s assassination
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for many years. As Dan Rather implied in his autobiography, if there
were a conspiracy behind JFK’s death, why didn’t the reporters there find
it? The answer is also in his autobiography, and in the later comments
of newsmen like Schieffer: The reporters’ biggest concerns were scoop-
ing the competition and getting something sensational out quickly.29
The whole atmosphere was not conducive to careful, methodical inves-
tigation, or questioning the information stated publicly or leaked by
authorities (something that was rare in those pre-Watergate days). In
later years, newsmen like Rather and Cronkite would find themselves
defending the “lone assassin” theory almost as a matter of professional
pride, as if anyone questioning it were somehow calling the newsmen’s
judgment into question.
A good example of the media feeding frenzy in Dallas that weekend
was Oswald’s press appearance, held after midnight on Friday, which
Jack Ruby attended. As described to journalist Jack Anderson by Johnny
Rosselli, after “Oswald was picked up . . . underworld conspirators
feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them.
This almost certainly would have brought a massive US crackdown on
the Mafia, so Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald.”30 That Friday
evening, as Ruby tried to get close to Oswald, he found himself incred-
ibly busy. Ruby had free access to police facilities because, as Tippit’s
attorney later said, Ruby was “very close friends” with Captain Fritz,
who was running the homicide investigation, and “Ruby, in spite of his
reputation of being a ‘hood,’ was allowed complete run of the Homicide
Bureau.”31
Ruby later admitted he was carrying his pistol that evening. He was
seen on the third floor of police headquarters that night at 6:00 PM (Cen-
tral) and again an hour later. Not long after that, Ruby attempted to open
the door to Captain Fritz’s office, where Oswald was being interrogated.
If Ruby had succeeded, he probably would have done then what mil-
lions of people would see him do on live television less than forty-one
hours later. But that night two policemen stopped Ruby, one cautioning
him, “You can’t go in there, Jack.”
Jack left the police station, but not for long. At 10:30 PM, while Oswald
was being interrogated, Ruby called one of the officers and offered to
bring them sandwiches, but the officer declined. Ruby was seen at the
police station again around 11:30 PM. Soon after, Ruby attended a press
briefing by Chief Curry and DA Wade, where he learned that Oswald
was going to be shown to newsmen in a press conference in the base-
ment. Ruby made sure he was there, and he is clearly visible in film of
Oswald’s brief press conference. However, the film also shows that Ruby
was too far away to get a clear shot at Oswald (and in the packed room,
swarming with police, one shot was all he could count on).
But Ruby was able to helpfully correct Wade when the DA mistak-
enly said that Oswald was a member of the “Free Cuba Committee.”
That was the name of an anti-Castro group run by Eladio del Valle,
the criminal associate of Ferrie, Trafficante, and Masferrer (the last two
also knew Ruby). Ruby shouted out a correction to Wade, saying it was
actually the “Fair Play for Cuba Committee,” which was a pro-Castro
organization.32
During the rowdy press conference, Oswald said in response to a
question that he “didn’t shoot anybody, no sir” and correctly stated
that he had not been charged with shooting the President. Oswald also
asked for someone to “come forward to give me legal assistance,” pos-
sibly an appeal to one of his contacts, like Banister or Phillips, to clear
him with the authorities. (Two lawyers connected to Marcello received
calls about representing Oswald, but Oswald never saw a lawyer while
he was in custody.) Interestingly, Chief Curry later said that “one would
think Oswald had been trained in interrogation techniques and resisting
interrogation techniques,” and that Curry believed Oswald could have
been some type of agent. That was based on the way Oswald handled
himself during the twelve hours of interrogation that weekend, none
of which were recorded or stenographically transcribed. Assistant DA
Alexander said that he “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 that he found himself in.”33
Alexander apparently didn’t consider the possibility that Oswald
had been trained to handle KGB interrogation before he went to Russia,
or to deal with the possibility of interrogation by Cuba’s secret police
if Oswald successfully entered that country. DA Alexander also didn’t
entertain the prospect that Oswald might have been innocent of shooting
JFK. (As many authors, such as Anthony Summers, have documented,
“nobody has ever made the flimsiest allegation that the authentic Lee
Oswald had anything but good to say about John Kennedy.” This was
true in Oswald’s interrogations, his media appearances, and his pri-
vate talks. Three months before JFK’s murder, Oswald had been inter-
viewed by a New Orleans police lieutenant who later said that Oswald
“seemed to favor President Kennedy [and] in no way demonstrated
any animosity or ill feeling toward President Kennedy . . . he liked the
President.”)34
After Oswald had been taken from the room after the press conference,
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Ruby ran up to DA Wade, saying, “Hi, Henry!” Wade shook hands with
Ruby and asked, “What are you doing here?” William Manchester wrote
that “Ruby waved his hand about and said grandly, ‘I know all these
fellows,’” meaning the many policemen in the room.35 Ruby realized he
wouldn’t have any more chances to get to Oswald that night, so he left
and went to a radio station owned by Gordon McClendon, a close friend
of David Atlee Phillips. McClendon was also friends with Ruby, who
had tried to call McClendon’s home earlier that evening.
Oswald was finally charged with killing JFK at 1:30 AM (Central); he
had been charged with killing Tippit earlier, at 7:30 PM. Anthony Sum-
mers writes that Assistant DA Alexander later said Oswald was charged
with killing JFK because of his departure from the Book Depository,
his story about bringing curtain rods to work that morning, and the
“‘communist’ literature found among Oswald’s effects at the rooming
house.”36 (Several years earlier, Guy Banister had found and displayed
for New Orleans media a very similar stash of incriminating communist
literature.)37
By 2:00 AM, Ruby had left the radio station for an suspicious meet-
ing at Simpson’s Parking Garage. There, Ruby met with a Dallas police
officer and his girlfriend, a dancer for Ruby. Those involved gave vary-
ing accounts of the length of the meeting and who was present, but the
policeman said it lasted between two and three hours. That seems like
a long time for a meeting in the middle of the night at a parking garage.
Some have speculated that Ruby was trying to talk the officer into shoot-
ing Oswald, helping Ruby find an officer who would, or helping Ruby
get close enough to Oswald to do the job himself.
Chapter Fifteen
In the predawn hours of November 23, 1963, another piece of evidence
surfaced that would seal the case against Oswald. Historian Richard
Mahoney writes that at “4:00 AM (Central), executives at Klein’s Sport-
ing Goods in Chicago discovered the
American Rifleman
[magazine]
coupon Oswald had allegedly used to order the Mannlicher-Carcano
[found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository.] CIA files from the
Assassination Archives reveal that the first lead as to the location of
the rifle came from the chief investigator of the Cook County Sheriff’s
Office, Richard Cain, a Roselli-Giancana confederate.”1 Like most of
those involved in the JFK assassination operation, Cain also knew Traf-
ficante and had worked on the CIA-Mafia plots—and CIA files confirm
that he knew about the AMWORLD part of the JFK-Almeida coup plan.
Cain, a “made” member of the Chicago Mafia, was also an active CIA
asset at the time.2
Cain had been feeding information to the CIA since August that would
impact the course of the investigation, and he continued to plant phony
stories in the press after JFK’s death, saying that Oswald had received
money in Chicago. However, when Chicago Secret Service Agent Abra-
ham Bolden was asked by the Dallas office to get information about
“Oswald’s rifle and the possibility that Oswald received money from
Chicago . . . neither Bolden, nor any other Secret Service agent, could
get any information on either lead and they were preempted by the FBI,
who had . . . warned all concerned to talk to no one, including the Secret
Service.”3 Because of LBJ’s close relationship with J. Edgar Hoover, the
FBI would win the turf war with the Secret Service over the JFK inves-
tigation. However, both agencies continued to cooperate in squelching
the release of problematic information, including any news about the
Chicago and Tampa attempts.
As for mob lawman Richard Cain, a CIA memo says he was “heav-
ily involved” in the JFK assassination investigation, but almost none of
those files have been released.4 Months later, when Abraham Bolden
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LEGACY OF SECRECY
would try to bring the Chicago and Tampa attempts to the Warren Com-
mission’s attention, Cain would have the motive, means, and opportu-
nity to help frame Bolden.
Thousands of pages have been written about the odd circumstances
of the rifle’s ordering, its abysmal condition, and whether or not the