Kennedy's Last Days: The Assassination That Defined a Generation Read online

  The Committee flyer. [NARA/JFK Assassination Records]

  At 2:00 A.M. on the morning of September 27, Lee Harvey Oswald changes buses in Houston. When he arrives in Mexico City at 10:00 A.M., Oswald checks in at the Hotel del Comercio, just four blocks from the bus station, at a rate of $1.28 per night. And though exhausted after the grueling 20-hour bus ride, he walks immediately to the Cuban embassy.

  Four months. Four long months. That’s how long it will take for Lee Harvey Oswald to obtain a Soviet visa, which it turns out he needs before Cuban officials will grant him travel documents.

  Oswald doesn’t have enough money to wait four months. He needs to go to Cuba now.

  And so he stands toe-to-toe with consul Eusebio Azcue at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City, arguing with him over the Soviet visa. Finally, Azcue has had enough, and he speaks candidly with the American. “A person like you,” Azcue tells Oswald in fractured English, “in the place of aiding the Cuban Revolution, are doing it harm.”

  Azcue concludes by telling Oswald that he will never get the paperwork to enter Cuba.

  The consul turns back to his office, leaving Oswald crushed. His dream of escaping to Cuba is over. A despondent Oswald spends the weekend in Mexico City, eating local food and taking in a bullfight. But his despair is growing.

  The Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas. All Texas public schools use the same textbooks. They were stored and mailed out from here. [LOC, HS 503-3349]

  He then takes the bus back to Dallas, where he rents a room at the YMCA and looks for work. He sheepishly phones Marina at Ruth Paine’s home. She is due to deliver their second baby any day.

  Oswald entertains Marina with tales of Mexico, but also admits that his trip was a failure. Marina listens and believes that there is a change for the better in her husband. But she refuses to live with him. So, while looking for work, he phones his wife when he can and sometimes hitchhikes from Dallas out to the Paine residence to see her.

  Finally, thanks to a kindly reference from Ruth Paine, he finds a job. It is menial labor for a man with Oswald’s relatively high IQ of 118 and involves nothing more than placing books into boxes for shipping. At 8:00 A.M. on Wednesday, October 16, Lee Harvey Oswald reports for his first day on the job at the Texas School Book Depository. The seven-floor red-brick Dallas warehouse is located on the corner of Elm and North Houston and overlooks Dealey Plaza.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  NOVEMBER 1963

  Dallas, Texas

  KNOWN AS THE “BIG D,” Dallas is a dusty, dry town, miserably hot in the summer and cool in the winter. It is surrounded by some of the most unremarkable scenery in America. It is a hard city, built on business and oil, and driven by just one thing: money.

  Downtown Dallas. Reunion Tower rises above the city. The low, curved colonnade is in Dealey Plaza. [© Corbis]

  Fifty years from now, Dallas will be a cosmopolitan metropolis, home to a diverse population and a wide range of multinational corporations. But in 1963, the population of 747,000 is overwhelmingly white, 97 percent Protestant, and growing larger and more conservative by the day as newcomers flood in from rural Texas and Louisiana.

  Reverend Billy Graham was seated next to President Kennedy at a prayer breakfast in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., in 1961. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  But most of all, Dallas is a city that does not trust outsiders or their political views, particularly those of liberal Yankees. John Kennedy has heard many negative reports about Dallas. Trusted friends are warning him to cancel this leg of his Texas trip. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas confided to John Kennedy that he was physically afraid of entering Dallas, calling it “a very dangerous place.”

  “I wouldn’t go there,” he told JFK. “Don’t you go.”

  Evangelist Billy Graham also warns the president to stay away. Texas congressman Ralph Yarborough’s two brothers live and work in Dallas, and both make a point of telling him that the city hates Kennedy. And in early November, Byron Skelton of the Texas Democratic National Committee will have a premonition that JFK may be placing himself in grave danger by coming to Dallas. Skelton will repeatedly warn the president to stay away.

  But John Kennedy is the president of the United States of America—all of them. There should be no place in this vast country where he has to be afraid to visit.

  JFK has decided to visit Big D. There is no backing down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NOVEMBER 1, 1963

  Irving, Texas 2:30 P.M.

  IT IS FRIDAY AFTERNOON, AND A WEARY James Hosty Jr. rings the bell at Ruth Paine’s home. The burly 39-year-old FBI agent has spent the day investigating cases in nearby Fort Worth. He is juggling almost 40 investigations right now, taking small bites out of each one. But any case involving J. Edgar Hoover’s battle against communism gets top priority, which is why Hosty is stopping at Mrs. Paine’s rather than driving straight back into Dallas to start his weekend. The agent is looking for Lee Harvey Oswald. The bureau has received a tip from the CIA about Oswald’s visit to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in September, and agents are now anxious to find him.

  Mrs. Paine opens the door. Hosty flashes his badge, explaining that he’s a special agent of the FBI, and asks if they can talk.

  Mrs. Paine is cordial to James Hosty. She invites him inside and says that this is the first time she’s ever met an FBI agent.

  Special Agent Hosty is the FBI’s expert on Lee and Marina Oswald. Back in March, he opened a file on Marina in order to keep tabs on the Soviet citizen. Later that month, he requested that Lee’s file be reopened due to Oswald’s obvious communist sympathies. The agent has tracked the Oswalds from apartment to apartment, from Dallas to New Orleans and back again. But now the trail has grown cold.

  Hosty asks Ruth Paine if she knows where he can find the man.

  Ruth Paine. This photo was taken on December 5, 1963. [© Associated Press]

  Paine acknowledges that Marina and her two girls live in her home. After a moment’s hesitation, she admits that she doesn’t know where Oswald lives, though she does know that he works at the Texas School Book Depository in downtown Dallas. Paine gets a phone book and looks up the address: 411 Elm Street.

  Hosty writes all this down.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NOVEMBER 4, 1963

  Washington, D.C.

  SPECIAL AGENT WINSTON G. LAWSON of the Secret Service’s White House detail is informed of the president’s upcoming trip to Dallas.

  Lawson, a Korean War veteran in his early 30s, specializes in planning Kennedy’s official travels. As with all such visits, his primary responsibilities are to identify individuals who might be a threat to the president, take action against anyone considered to be such a threat, and plan security for the president’s appearances and motorcade route.

  There is still debate about whether there is to be a motorcade through downtown Dallas. Lawson knows that Dallas is a security nightmare because of the more than 20,000 windows lining the city’s major streets. The more windows, the more places to hide a gunman aiming at the president’s limousine.

  But Lawson temporarily sets that question aside. He begins his investigation of potential threats by combing through the Secret Service’s Protective Research Section (PRS). These files list all individuals who have threatened the president or are potentially dangerous to him. A check of the PRS on November 8 by Lawson reveals that there are no potentially dangerous people in the Dallas area.

  Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service White House detail. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  Lawson then travels to Texas and interviews local law enforcement and other federal agencies, continuing his search for individuals who might be a threat to John F. Kennedy. The FBI comes up with the name of a Dallas-area resident who might be a serious threat. But it is not the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. Instead, it is a known local troublemaker who has no plans to kill the president of the
United States.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  NOVEMBER 16, 1963

  Dallas, Texas 1:50 P.M.

  THIRTEEN-YEAR-OLD STERLING WOOD AIMS his Winchester .30-30 rifle at the silhouette of a man’s head. He exhales and squeezes the trigger, then squints downrange at the target. It is Saturday. Sterling and his father, Homer, have come to the Sports Drome Rifle Range to get their guns ready for deer season.

  The boy notices a young man standing in the shooting booth next to him. He is aiming at a similar silhouette. The teenager reads a lot of gun books and is pretty sure that the guy is firing an Italian carbine. It appears that the rifle’s barrel has been sawed off to make it shorter, but it’s still longer than Sterling’s Winchester by a few inches.

  “Daddy,” Sterling whispers to his father, “it looks like a 6.5 Italian carbine.”

  This advertisement from a gun magazine shows the type of rifle that Oswald ordered through the mail. [© Bettmann/Corbis]

  The man shoots. Flame leaps from the end of the gun because of its shortened length. Sterling can actually feel the heat from the blast. The gunman removes the spent cartridge and places it in his pocket as if he doesn’t want to leave behind evidence that he’s been there. Sterling finds it unusual that the shooter does this after each and every round.

  The teenager is impressed that almost all the shooter’s bullet holes are clustered around what would be the eye if the paper target were a real man.

  Sterling will later testify that he believes this man is Lee Harvey Oswald.

  * * *

  Oswald turned 24 just a month ago. He has little to show for his time on earth. He is in an on-again, off-again relationship with his wife and children. He works a menial job. And despite his sharp intellect, he has no higher education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to be an American, a Cuban, or a Russian.

  Bullets like these were used in carbine rifles. [© Blaz Kure/Shutterstock.com]

  Still, he longs to be a great man—a significant man whose name will never be forgotten. And so far, the only person who seems to be impressed with him is the kid at the shooting range.

  Marina Oswald with June on the left and Rachel in her lap. This photograph was taken two days after the assassination. [© Tom Dillard/Dallas Morning News/Corbis]

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  NOVEMBER 18, 1963

  Dallas, Texas

  SPECIAL AGENT WINSTON G. LAWSON, Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service’s Dallas office, and Dallas police chief Jesse Curry drive the proposed motorcade route from Love Field airport to the Dallas Trade Mart, a huge showroom building where the president is scheduled to give a lunch speech to 2,600 people. Special Agent Sorrels is very concerned about the many buildings and grass borders along the route. He will later testify that “during the time that we were making this survey with the police, I made the remark that if someone wanted to get the President of the United States, he could do it with a high-powered rifle and a telescopic sight from some building or some hillside.”

  Nevertheless, the agents decide that this will be the presidential motorcade route.

  Anytime the president of the United States drives through a crowded city, there is a careful balance between protecting his life and ensuring that the maximum number of people can see the chief executive. A perfect motorcade route doesn’t have high windows from which a sniper can poke a gun. It offers alternative routes in case something goes wrong, features wide streets that keep crowds far back from the vehicles, and has few, if any, tight turns.

  This photograph shows where Secret Service agents should be when the president is in a motorcade. It was taken when Kennedy was in Cork, Ireland, in June 1963. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  The Dallas motorcade route violates each of these principles.

  Secret Service agents are trained to position their bodies between the president and the crowd, acting as human shields. While doing so, they are supposed to study the area and look up at windows for signs of a gunman or rifle barrel. The president’s limousine has running boards on both sides that allow the agents to shield the president while also performing this scan. They hold on to handles fixed to the car for balance. However, JFK does not like the agents to stand on the running boards because this blocks the crowd’s view of him, so they often ride one car behind.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  NOVEMBER 21, 1963

  Aboard Air Force One 2:00 P.M.

  TODAY’S JOURNEY BEGAN AT 9:15 A.M., when John Kennedy said good-bye to Caroline as she set off to the third floor of the White House for school. John Jr., who will be three years old next week, got the privilege of riding with his parents in the presidential helicopter from the White House to Air Force One. The young boy enjoyed the trip immensely.

  But as Marine One set down on the runway next to the presidential plane, young John pleaded for his journey to continue. “I want to come,” he said to his father.

  “You can’t,” the president replied softly.

  “It’s just a few days,” the first lady reminded the crying child. “And when we come back, it will be your birthday.”

  A U.S. Army helicopter often transports the president and his family to airports or other destinations close to Washington, D.C. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  John Jr. began to sob. “John, like Mummy said, we’ll be back in a few days,” the president explained. JFK then kissed his son. Turning toward the Secret Service agent in charge of the boy’s protection: “You take care of John for me, Mr. Foster,” he ordered gently.

  Caroline Kennedy grins at White House photographer Cecil Stoughton. Secret Service agent Robert Foster sits next to her. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  At 11:00 A.M., the president gave John Jr. one last hug and stepped onto the tarmac before climbing the steps up into Air Force One. The first lady was at his side. Five minutes later, the plane went wheels-up for the three-and-a-half-hour flight to Texas. John Kennedy Jr. watched the great jet rise into the sky and disappear into the distance.

  President John F. Kennedy pored over the “Eyes Only, President” intelligence documents overflowing from his battered black briefcase.

  Air Force One will land first in San Antonio. Then on to Houston and then Fort Worth, where the president and first lady will spend the night. Dallas will come tomorrow. JFK’s personal pilot, Colonel Jim Swindal, will take the Kennedys from Fort Worth into Dallas’s Love Field. The flight will be short, just 13 minutes. But the symbolic image of Air Force One descending from the heavens to land in that troubled city will be a far more powerful sight than John Kennedy driving 35 miles across the prairie in a limousine.

  Air Force One, a specially fitted Boeing 707, was called the flying White House. [JFK Presidential Library and Museum]

  JFK gets up and makes his way back to the first family’s quarters. He taps lightly on the door and pokes his head in. “You all right?” he asks Jackie. They will be landing soon. “Fine,” the first lady responds.

  “I just wanted to be sure,” he tells her, closing the door.

  The president feels a slight dip as Air Force One begins to descend. He looks out the window. Five miles below and slowly rising up to greet him is the barren and flat landscape of Texas.

  * * *

  On the ground in Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald stuffs cardboard shipping boxes with books as he fills orders at the Texas School Book Depository. But today he is easily distracted. A map of the motorcade route was printed on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald’s afternoon edition and caught his attention. Air Force One will land at Love Field, and from there, the president will travel to the Trade Mart to give a speech. On the way, he will pass the Texas School Book Depository.

  Several views of the sixth floor taken on November 22, 1963. [NARA/JFK Assassination Records]

  Oswald looks out the nearest window and sees precisely where President Kennedy’s limousine will make a slow right turn from Main Street onto Houston, then an even slower left-ha
nd turn onto Elm, where it will pass almost directly below the windows of the depository. Getting a good glimpse of the president will be as simple as looking down onto the street below.

  But Lee Harvey Oswald is planning to do much more than catch a glimpse. In fact, he is quietly plotting to shoot the president. Oswald does not hate the president. He has no reason to want JFK dead. He is, however, bitter that a man such as John Kennedy has so many advantages in life. Oswald well understands that it’s easier for men born into privilege to distinguish themselves. But other than that small amount of envy, he does not speak unfavorably about the president. In fact, Oswald wants to be like JFK.

  Above all, he wants to be a great man.

  * * *

  “Can I ride home with you this afternoon?” Oswald casually asks Wesley Frazier. His 19-year-old coworker’s home is in the suburb of Irving, a half block from where Marina Oswald lives with Ruth Paine. Oswald often catches a ride out there on Fridays.

  Investigators carry the container made of paper that Oswald used to hide his rifle. It was found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building after the assassination. [© Bettmann/Corbis]

  But then Frazier realizes that today isn’t Friday. It’s Thursday—and Oswald never rides to Irving on Thursdays. “Why are you going home today?” Frazier asks him.