JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (114 page)

She reached out for his hand and greeted him warmly. There are two accounts of what she said then to Mikoyan. As she recalled her words, they were: “Please tell Mr. Chairman President that I know he and my husband worked together for a peaceful world, and now he and you must carry on my husband’s work.”
[935]

Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s memory of what Jacqueline Kennedy said to Mikoyan was more succinct: “My husband’s dead. Now peace is up to you.”
[936]

That essence of her message is appropriate to us all. John F. Kennedy is dead. Now peace is up to us.

Notes

[
1
]. “Message From Chairman Khrushchev to President Kennedy,” December 11, 1962.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume VI: Kennedy-Khrushchev Exchanges
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996), p. 228.

[
2
]. Sergei N. Khrushchev,
Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower
(University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 695.

[
3
]. Norman Cousins, “Pope John’s Optimism on Peace: Nothing Is Impossible,”
Seattle Times
(April 1, 1973).

[
4
].
Public Papers of the Presidents: John F. Kennedy, 1963
(Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), p. 462.

[
5
]. David Halberstam,
The Best and the Brightest
(New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 295-96.

[
6
]. Ibid., p. 296.

[
7
]. FBI Report from San Antonio Office by John M. Kemmy, April 30, 1964; Warren Commission Exhibit Number 2129;
WCH
,
Exhibits,
vol. 24, p. 704.

[
8
]. Written statement by Albert Guy Bogard to Dallas FBI Agents C. Ray Hall and Maurice J. White, December 9, 1963; Warren Commission Exhibit No. 2969;
WCH
,
Exhibits,
vol. 26, p. 451. Albert Guy Bogard said he thought the date of the Oswald visit to Downtown Lincoln-Mercury was November 9, 1963. It was a date the FBI and the Warren Commission locked onto. However, another key witness, car salesman Eugene M. Wilson, said the incident definitely occurred on Saturday, November 2. Wilson was able to identify the date because “Oswald” test drove the red Mercury Comet before “Wilson used the same vehicle later that day to drive his wife and friends home after a meeting of the Lone Star Bulldog Club.” Wilson confirmed the date of the meeting, and thus of the young man’s test drive, as November 2. Earl Golz, “Salesman Insists FBI Discounted Facts on Oswald,”
Dallas Morning News
(May 8, 1977), p. 12A. On CD-ROM for John Armstrong,
Harvey and Lee
(Arlington, Tex.: Quasar, 2003), November, 63-01.

[
9
].
WCH
,
Exhibits,
vol. 26, p. 451. When “Oswald” and Bogard returned to the showroom, the young man refused to give his address and phone number, so Bogard just wrote the name “Lee Oswald” on the back of one of his cards and put it in his pocket. On November 22 when he heard on the radio that Oswald had been picked up as a suspect, Bogard showed co-workers the card with “Lee Oswald” written on the back, said “He isn’t a prospect [for a sale] any more,” and threw the card in the waste basket. Ibid.

[
10
]. Golz, “Salesman Insists,” p. 12A. The
Warren Report
dismissed witness Eugene M. Wilson’s citation of the young man’s statement, “Maybe I’m going to have to go back to Russia to buy a car,” on the grounds that “the statement is not consistent with Bogard’s story. Indeed, Bogard has made no mention that the customer ever spoke with Wilson while he was in the showroom. More important, on November 23, a search through the showroom’s refuse was made, but no paper bearing Oswald’s name was found.”
The Warren Commission Report
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992, from U.S. Government printing 1964), p. 321.

Based on the Warren Commission’s own documents, Bogard and Wilson appear to be complementary, not contradictory, witnesses, supported by two other witnesses, Frank Pizzo and Oran Brown. See the point-by-point analyses of the testimony of all four men by Sylvia Meagher,
Accessories after the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report
(New York: Vintage Books, 1992), pp. 351-56, and by Mark Lane,
Rush to Judgment
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), pp. 331-33. Oran Brown also told Mark Lane: “You know, I am afraid to talk. Bogard was beaten by some men so badly that he was in the hospital for some time, and this was after he testified. Then he left town suddenly and I haven’t heard from him or about him since.”
Rush to Judgment
, p. 333 footnote. When Brown spoke with Lane on April 4, 1966, he was unaware that Bogard had already died two months earlier, on February 14, 1966, an apparent suicide victim from carbon monoxide poisoning in his car in a Hallsville, Louisiana, cemetery. Craig Roberts and John Armstrong,
JFK: The Dead Witnesses
(Tulsa, Okla.: Consolidated Press International, 1995), p. 37. Michael Benson,
Encyclopedia of the JFK Assassination
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2002), p. 63.

[
11
].
Warren Report
, p. 321.

[
12
]. From Thomas Merton’s January 18, 1962, letter to W. H. Ferry, in
Letters from Tom: A Selection of Letters from Father Thomas Merton, Monk of Gethsemani, to W. H. Ferry, 1961-1968
, edited by W. H. Ferry (Scarsdale, New York: Fort Hill Press, 1983), p. 15.

[
13
]. Ibid.

[
14
]. Ralph G. Martin,
A Hero for Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1983), p. 500.

[
15
]. Robert F. Kennedy,
Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis
(New York: Signet, 1969), p. 110.

[
16
]. Evelyn Lincoln,
My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy
(New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 230.

[
17
]. T. S. Settel, editor,
The Faith of JFK
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1965), p. 92.

[
18
]. Nicholas A. Schneider,
Religious Views of President John F. Kennedy
(St. Louis: B. Herder, 1965), p. 99.

[
19
]. Martin,
Hero for Our Times,
p. 503.

[
20
]. Geoffrey Perret,
Jack: A Life like No Other
(New York: Random House, 2001), p. 197.

[
21
]. Ibid.

[
22
]. The formal title of Alan Seeger’s most famous poem seems to have been “Rendezvous,” as it is identified at www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/LostPoets/Seeger. However, in
The Oxford Book of American Verse
, Seeger’s poem is titled by its refrain,
“I Have a
Rendezvous
with Death.”
The Oxford Book of American
Verse
, chosen and edited by Bliss Carman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1927), pp. 624-25.

[
23
]. Richard D. Mahoney interview of Samuel E. Belk III. Richard D. Mahoney,
Sons & Brothers: The Days of Jack and Bobby Kennedy
(New York: Arcade, 1999), p. 281.

[
24
].
WCH
, vol. 10, p. 370.

[
25
]. Ibid., pp. 371-72.

[
26
]. Ibid., p. 380.

[
27
]. Other witnesses added their own vivid descriptions of a man looking like Oswald taking target practice at the Sports Drome in Dallas in November. See the Warren Commission testimony of Sterling Charles Wood and his father, Dr. Homer Wood. Ibid., pp. 385-98.

[
28
].
Warren Report
, p. 319.

[
29
]. Ibid., pp. 734-35.

[
30
]. Ibid., p. 319.

[
31
]. The Warren Commission also had to deal with the fact that some witnesses to the rifle-firing Oswald “said he was accompanied by one or more other persons.”
Warren Report
, p. 318. Garland Slack, for example, told his wife that Oswald was brought to the Sports Drome on one occasion “by a man named ‘Frazier’ from Irving, Texas.”
WCH, Exhibit
No. 3077;
WCH
, vol. 26, p. 681. Buell Wesley Frazier, Ruth Paine’s neighbor in Irving, was Lee Harvey Oswald’s co-worker at the Texas School Book Depository. Frazier denied to the FBI that he had ever taken Oswald to a rifle range. Ibid. If it was indeed Frazier and either an impersonator or the real Oswald, their joint involvement immediately introduced the issue of conspiracy—another subject the Warren Commission tried to avoid. The
Warren Report
concluded that “the allegations pertaining to the companions who reportedly accompanied the man believed to be Oswald” were “inconsistent among themselves,” thus dismissing also the troubling evidence of collaborators.
Warren Report
, p. 319. Besides too many Oswalds, there were too many Oswald companions. Once President Johnson (and the Warren Commission) had backed away from the implications of a conspiracy, even one Oswald companion was too many.

[
32
].
WCH, Exhibit
15; vol. 16, p. 33.