Killing Kennedy (32 page)

D
ALLAS,
T
EXAS

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 sight their guns for deer season.

Young Sterling 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. Judging from the number of scratches on the stock, the precocious Dallas teenager suspects that the weapon is army surplus. It’s even got a sling to make it easier for an infantryman to carry and a four-power telescopic sight to make the target seem closer and easier to shoot with pinpoint accuracy.

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

The man shoots. Flame leaps from the end of the gun, thanks to 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 of the shooter’s bullet holes are clustered around what would be the eye if the paper target were a real man.

“Sir, is that a 6.5 Italian carbine?” Sterling asks the stranger.

“Yes, sir,” the man responds.

“And is that a four-power scope?”

“Yes, it is.”

The shooter stays just long enough to fire only “eight or ten” shots, in Sterling’s estimation—just enough rounds to ration his ammunition while ensuring that his rifle and scope are accurate.

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

*   *   *

On that November Saturday, the front page of the
Dallas Morning News
features a story on President Kennedy’s visit to Dallas, which is just six days away. The paper speculates on the route Kennedy’s motorcade will follow through the heart of the city. Air Force One will land at the Love Field, and from there the president will travel to a large commercial center known as the Trade Mart, where he will give a speech. On the way, he will pass the Texas School Book Depository, the workplace of Lee Harvey Oswald.

Oswald is an avid newspaper reader and has known for quite some time that John Kennedy is coming to Dallas. On this day, Oswald has decided to spend the weekend in the city rather than journey out to the suburbs to see Marina and their daughters.

Oswald turned twenty-four just one month ago. He has little to show for his time on earth. He is losing his wife and children. He works a menial job. And despite his keen intellect, he has no advanced education. He doesn’t know whether he wants to be an American, a Cuban, or a Russian.

Still, he longs to be a great man. A significant man. A man whose name will never be forgotten.

John Wilkes Booth, in the days before he shot Abraham Lincoln, also longed to be such a man. And just as Booth practiced his marksmanship at a shooting range days before the assassination, so, too, does Lee Harvey Oswald.

Thirteen-year-old Sterling Wood is the first person impressed by Oswald in a long time. For today, Oswald
was
truly great—great at firing several shots through the silhouette of a man’s head.

*   *   *

The destruction of Camelot might have begun with the Bay of Pigs, when John F. Kennedy made a permanent enemy of Fidel Castro and infuriated his own Central Intelligence Agency.

Or it might have started that October night in 1962 when JFK severed his ties with Sam Giancana, Frank Sinatra, and the Mafia, then stood back and did nothing as his brother Bobby zealously prosecuted organized crime.

Camelot’s demise could have originated during the Cuban missile crisis, when JFK scored a decisive public relations victory over Nikita Khrushchev and the Soviet Empire, while at the same time frustrating his top generals and what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” for refusing to launch a war.

The destruction of Camelot could have begun in any number of ways.

But in fact, it begins on November 18, when Special Agent Winston G. Lawson of the Secret Service advance team, Forrest V. Sorrels of the Secret Service’s Dallas office, and Dallas police chief Jesse Curry drive ten very carefully selected miles from Love Field to the Trade Mart. “Hell,” says Special Agent Sorrels, glancing up at the thousands of windows looking down on them, “we’d be sitting ducks.”

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 the spectacle of the chief executive intermingling with the American people. Security is the act of getting him through the crowds alive, which is difficult on those days when the bubble-top roof is not buckled onto his convertible. A perfect motorcade route is devoid of the high windows from which a sniper can poke a gun, offers alternative routes in case something goes wrong, features wide streets that keep crowds far back from the vehicle, and has few, if any, tight turns.

The Dallas motorcade route violates every one of these principles.

The process of turning the presidential vehicle forces William Greer, the Secret Service agent who most often serves as JFK’s driver, to slow the limousine down considerably. This makes the president an easier target for a marksman to hit. Secret Service protocol stipulates that whenever a motorcade must slow down for a turn, agents must do a security check of the entire intersection ahead of time. Something as simple as a ninety-degree turn, which the Dallas motorcade route features at the corner of Main and Houston, can cause Greer to step hard on the brakes. A sweeping 120-degree turn, such as the one at the corner of Houston and Elm, can slow Kennedy’s Lincoln down to just a few miles per hour.

That is the pace of a brisk walk, and, through the high-powered scope of an assassin’s rifle, such a slow speed can turn the president’s body into a very attainable target. When this happens, Secret Service agents are trained to position their bodies between the president and the crowd, acting as human shields. While doing so, they are to study the landscape and look up at building 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 metallic handles for balance. However, JFK does not like the the agents to stand on the running boards because this blocks the crowd’s view of him, so they often ride one car behind.

But all of this protection can be circumvented once a gunman knows the precise motorcade route. Thus, once Secret Service special agents Sorrels and Lawson choose the president’s path on November 18, and then release that information to the public, anyone who wants to harm the president can begin planning the precise place and time of the attack. To put it another way: Many people would like to see John F. Kennedy dead. But before Monday, November 18, there existed no field of fire in Dallas.

Now there does.

22

N
OVEMBER 21, 1963

A
BOARD
A
IR
F
ORCE
O
NE

2:00 P.M.

In the final hours of his life, President John F. Kennedy is flying in style aboard Air Force One. He pores over the “Eyes Only, President” intelligence documents overflowing from his battered black alligator-skin briefcase. JFK speed-reads at his normal 1,200 words per minute, glasses perched on the end of his nose, a study in focus. On the couch against the opposite wall of JFK’s airborne office, Jackie Kennedy speaks softly in Spanish, practicing a speech she will give tonight in Houston to a group of Latin American women.

The First Lady’s Castilian purr is a welcome addition to the president’s private in-flight sanctuary. John Kennedy is so glad Jackie is traveling to Texas with him that he took the unusual step of helping her select the clothes she will wear at her many public appearances. One outfit, a pink Chanel wool suit with a matching pillbox hat, is his personal favorite.

Fashion might not normally interest JFK, but the design and décor of Air Force One has received plenty of his attention. There were three presidential airplanes available to him when he first took office. Any one of them could be dubbed “Air Force One” whenever he is on board. Yet these airplanes looked more air force than presidential. Indeed, the words
Military Air Transport Service
were emblazoned on the sides. The predominant fuselage characteristic was unpainted metal.

But the craft possessing tail number 26000, in which John Kennedy now flies, is a distinct upgrade. The president took delivery of this new presidential version of the Boeing 707 in October 1962. And just as Jackie has overseen the redecoration of the White House—one fine detail is now taking place even as the Kennedys fly to Texas: upon their return, JFK will enjoy new drapes in the Oval Office—so John Kennedy has overseen the redecoration of Air Force One. The fuselage and wings, for instance, feature a bold new pale-blue-and-white color scheme, with the words
United States of America
proudly displayed above the row of forty-five oval passenger windows. Inside, the carpeting is lush and the creature comforts many, including a private office, a conference area, and a bedroom where a painting of a French farmhouse hangs over the president’s rock-hard mattress. The presidential seal seems to adorn every fixture. JFK enjoys this new airplane so much that he has flown seventy-five thousand miles aboard 26000 in just thirteen months.

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 as they flew from the White House to Air Force One. The young boy wore a London Fog coat to keep away the November chill and 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.”

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 and turned to the Secret Service agent in charge of the boy’s protection: “You take care of John for me, Mr. Foster,” he ordered gently.

Bob Foster thought this unusual. President Kennedy normally never made such statements, no matter how much his son cried when it was time to say good-bye.

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 out of Andrews 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.

Air Force One will land first in San Antonio. Then it’s 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 fly the Kennedys from Fort Worth into Dallas’s Love Field. The flight will be short, just thirteen 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 thirty-five miles across the prairie in a limousine.

Now the president takes a break from his reading to light a cigar. Jackie has gone into their private cabin to change clothes. JFK smokes thoughtfully. Texas will be tricky politically. There’s no telling if the crowds will be hostile or receptive, and he’s concerned about Jackie enjoying herself. This could be a big test of whether she will be eager to campaign with him in 1964.

JFK gets up and makes his way back to the First Family’s quarters.

The president taps lightly on the door and pokes his head in. “You all right?” he asks Jackie. They will be landing soon. His wife is slipping into a crisp white dress.

“Fine,” the First Lady responds, looking in the mirror to adjust the beret that accessorizes the dress and its black belt.

“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 lies 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, and a map of the motorcade route printed on the front page of the
Dallas Times Herald
’s afternoon edition soon catches his attention. Oswald need look no farther than the nearest window to see precisely where President Kennedy’s limousine will make a slow right turn from Main Street onto Houston, then an even slower left-hand 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. Just a month ago, mere days before the birth of their second child, Marina noted his fascination with the movies
Suddenly
and
We Were Strangers
, both of which deal with the shooting of a government official—in the case of
Suddenly
, the president of the United States. The couple watched the films together, and Oswald even told Marina that the films felt authentic. She thought that a strange remark.