The Day Kennedy Was Shot (14 page)

As the legal counsel to the nation, Robert Kennedy had little experience in courts and even less in the field of political
compromise, but the President was pleased with his work and more than pleased. He appointed Robert to the National Security Council, where the secret decisions were made; he sought “Bobby's” advice in all matters and often listened to propositions from outsiders only to ask the rhetorical question: “What does Bobby think about it?”

As counsel to the McClellan Committee, young Robert fought organized crime, an appellation pinned to those (usually of Italian ancestry) who had permanent committees and boards of directors in many cities for the enrichment of all in the fields of vice, narcotics, and gambling. He had also applied himself to the exposure of union racketeers, notably James Riddle Hoffa of the Teamsters Union. Exposure turned out to be easy, with the assistance of renegade witnesses and the cameras of television, but conviction in court was seldom achieved and the devising of new statutes by the committee was lax and ineffectual.

As Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation belonged to his Department of Justice. This opened a new avenue of investigative procedure, a broad one encompassing the use of thousands of trained agents in many cities across the land. The free use of this weapon, Kennedy found, was blocked by the massive presence of John Edgar Hoover, who had been prosecuting interstate felons since 1924, the year before Bobby was born.

Hoover had enjoyed the confidence and respect of presidents from the administration of Calvin Coolidge onward. Now, in advanced years, the old tiger and the young wildcat were in the same hunting preserve. One of the least appreciated of Kennedy's virtues was his habit of stepping on the polished shoes of other public servants. In some cases, fear of the President kept the victims from protesting. In others, notably Hoover and the FBI, the schism became a gaping wound, unhealing and suppurating.

The Attorney General wanted to take charge of the FBI. Hoover did not relish being “summoned” by an inexperienced
”boy.” In this contretemps, John F. Kennedy could not help his brother. Hoover was a national hero; his FBI had never been tainted by scandal and permitted no encroachment by other departments. John F. Kennedy, elected president by a margin of only 118,000 votes out of more than 70 million cast, could not risk the wrath of the people by retiring Hoover. The wildcat was stuck with the tiger.

This morning, Bobby was making one of his periodic moves designed to keep a needle in the hide of Hoover. He had a group called the Organized Crime Committee. Some were federal prosecutors, beholden to the Attorney General. Others were officials in other offices. A few were investigators and public relations men. Their work was to expose and prosecute the American Mafia, or Cosa Nostra. This, of course, was high on the agenda of the FBI, but Robert Kennedy hoped to take the play away from his own FBI.

On the surface, the Department of Justice and the FBI worked well together. The attitude of subordination was maintained by Hoover, and the departmental amenities flowed in memoranda between the wings of the big doughnut-shaped building on Pennsylvania Avenue. But, in law, Robert Kennedy could issue unpalatable orders and force their execution.

This was the second of two meetings of the Organized Crime Committee. United States attorneys had been called in from many parts of the country to attend. Robert Kennedy's desire was to exploit a break in the Cosa Nostra—an FBI prisoner named Joseph Valachi, a minor member of the Mafia group, had secretly revealed more about his organization than the authorities had known. He had, under FBI persuasion, named names and places and events. In return, the Bureau had promised to protect his life, even if they had to arrange security in a federal prison.

Kennedy sat behind his desk, dropped the papers on the blotter, and removed his jacket. He loosened his tie from its col
lar moorings and unsnapped his cuff links and rolled his sleeves up. Before him was a long list of members of the Cosa Nostra who lived in many cities. Now he wanted to know what these federal prosecutors and assistants had been able to do with the information he had given them.

The city of Washington was bland with a cool majesty of purpose. The sun was strong now. The morning work, from Pentagon to Post Office to Patents, was orderly and routine. Perhaps it seemed dull because this was a time for football games and chilly air, a hoar frost on the grass and invitations to the galas of the social season. In hundreds of offices, workers sipped coffee and wondered whether it would be worthwhile—this being Friday—to take the family to the shore once more.

The dark sedan made the turn off Harry Hines Freeway and onto the small service road. Detective R. M. Sims did the driving, and he pulled by the main entrance to the Trade Mart and stopped it in the east parking lot. Captain Will Fritz, head of the Homicide Division of the Dallas Police Department, was not assigned to murder today. He and the two men who drove with him, Sims and E. L. Boyd, had nothing to do from 10:15
A.M.
until 2:30
P.M.
except watch a table.

Fritz was a big bifocaled man with hyperthyroid eyes who wore a cowboy hat. He was shrewd as captain of Homicide, but he had the potential pensioner's attitude of obeying the boss without question. No one ever found fault with Will Fritz, because the captain lived by the book. He was not a man for browbeating prisoners or bludgeoning confessions from the sullen. It is characteristic that his office on the third floor at police headquarters had walls of glass.

He walked back to the front of the Trade Mart with his men and, once inside, stood behind the President's table to study the layout. He saw the flowers, the speakers table spreading across two thirds of the Trade Mart, the solid ranks of long tables with
their snowy tablecloths, the waiters, armed with knives and forks, dogtrotting from the kitchen to the tables, the overseers, who shouted orders to the waiters, the green and yellow parakeets, excited by the noise, flitting from rail to rail on the overhead crosswalks, the fountain, swelling to show the color red, receding into a pale blue.

Agents Grant and Stewart saw Fritz and came over to brief the Dallas cops. Fritz was to safeguard the President's table. He knew almost every person of note in the Dallas area; he also knew most dangerous persons at sight. If Sims could flank one side of the table, and Boyd the other, then Captain Fritz would be free to cross behind the table to assist either of them. Of course, Secret Service men would also be assigned to the head table.

The captain noted that directly behind him was the main entrance. He asked the Secret Service who would meet the motorcade out front, who would escort the presidential party inside, and who would clear the big lobby before the arrival. “Now,” said Fritz, “when he gets inside, how does he approach this head table. From which side?”

The Secret Service answered all the questions and gave the police little orange buttons for their lapels. Robert Stewart said that the back and sides of the building were already secured. Local policemen were all over the place, under Deputy Chief M. V. Stevenson, and, except for a possible emergency delivery of more bread and rolls, no one would enter the block-and-a-half-long building except by the canopy at the front. The men stationed there, uniformed motorcycle police and Secret Service agents, would funnel the guests through the main door into the lobby where, as a matter of course, they would be properly screened by ticket-takers, local politicians, and more agents.

As the guests passed the back of the head table to find their places in the gigantic room, it would be up to Fritz and his men to keep them outside the roped area of the head table. No one,
even if properly identified, was to be permitted to pluck a flower from one of the many vases at the table nor to leave an object or package for anyone.

The front of the head table would be guarded exclusively by Secret Service agents from the President's party, but Stewart wanted to make certain that the flanks and the rear were secure at all times. He asked Fritz if he and his men had experience with explosives. The captain nodded. Stewart asked if Fritz would make a complete inspection of the entire head table and under it in about forty-five minutes and again when the word reached the Trade Mart that the President was five minutes away.

Fritz said yes. The assignment was going to be easy. There was a shout from the lobby and a few of the men ran out. Lieutenant Jack Revill of the Dallas Subversive Unit, had been checking Trade Mart merchants in and out with the assistance of Detective Roy Westphal. It was Westphal who decided to frisk a merchant at random and found a small Cuban flag in his pocket. This had led to a complete fanning of the merchant, who protested. He insisted that he was anti-Castro. Chief Stevenson came running and settled the matter by reminding the merchant that the Dallas Council had just passed a special ordinance about signs, picketing, protests, thrown objects, and threatening language during the visit of the President. This would include anything, he said, which might tend to embarrass or intimidate the President. The merchant would have to surrender the flag temporarily or leave the building. He gave up the little banner.

Up at Elm and Houston, Officer W. B. Barnett was a lonely man. He had nothing to do but stand in uniform against a wall and try to keep the drizzle from soaking him. Barnett was a traffic cop. Today he was to stand at the corner where the motorcade would make its final turn. His superior, Captain Lawrence, had told the traffic men that they were to divert all traffic five or ten
minutes before the motorcade passed, and they were to scout the crowds and the windows overhead for thrown objects.

Barnett stood on the corner opposite the School Book Depository, looking down at the railroad overpass, where donkey engines, small and energetic, shoved strings of freight cars back and forth. A man came over from the School Book Depository, trotting in the rain, and asked the police officer what time the motorcade would be passing. Barnett asked him why he wanted to know. “Because,” he said, “our building is full of people who would like to see President Kennedy go by.”

“Tell him to come out around 11:45,” the cop said. The stranger dogtrotted back to the front entrance, and Barnett walked toward the statue of Joseph Dealey to get a better look at the old red brick building. All the windows were closed.

At police headquarters, Lieutenant D. H. Gassett strode down the cross-hall on the third floor and entered the dispatch room. The big antennae on top of the municipal building would carry heavy traffic today. At 10
A.M.
three operators had reported for duty. Two were on Channel One of KKB 364, and one was on Channel Two. Gassett went over the situation with them once more, explaining that the two operators on Channel One, facing each other with the console between them, would handle the heavy traffic. The operator on Two had a separate console and faced the others. There was to be no foul-up, men reporting in were to do so by number, and Gassett would tolerate no friendly conversation. The motto was: “Get 'em on, take the message, get 'em off.”

As he left the room, Lieutenant Gassett whacked one of the time stamps. There were three, one for each operator, but they never agreed on the time of day. One operator, looking at the little clock from a low stool, read the time one way; another, sitting high or leaning over the clock, saw it a minute later or a minute earlier. It was odd, Gassett thought, that in a business where time was so important, that the clocks of the three radio
operators, if stamped simultaneously, would probably be a minute apart.

At the Sheraton Hotel, crouching in the shadow of the huge Southland Life Building in downtown Dallas, the President's communications headquarters was now complete. Anyone who called in from the parade route, or the plane, could be hooked in with the White House in Washington or, for that matter, to anyone in the world. This was the most sophisticated telephone equipment to be found anywhere. No conversation would go through the Sheraton switchboard; no operator could listen because there were voice scrambler attachments on both ends. A master sergeant, who was also a master electrician, sat in a small room and said: “Ready in Dallas” and asked for a few tests.

The code names for people and places were before him. President Kennedy was Lancer; Mrs. Kennedy was Lace; Vice-President Johnson was Volunteer; Mrs. Johnson was Victoria; the White House was Castle;
Air Force One
was Angel; the President's car was SS-100-X; Chief of the Secret Service James Rowley was Domino; the LBJ Ranch was Volcano; The Bagman was Satchel; the Pentagon was Calico, and the FBI was Cork.

It seemed involved, but Colonel George McNally and his communications men made it function almost instantaneously. The President, in his car, could lift a phone and say “Lancer to Lyric” and, in a breath, his daughter Caroline, at class in the White House, would be on the phone. The Vice-President, smiling to crowds, might hold a phone to his ear and say: “Volunteer to Daylight” and be talking to Secret Service Agent Jerry Kivett at the ranch hundreds of miles away.

At the moment, the sergeant at the switchboard was listening to Colonel Swindal, command pilot of
Air Force One
, call in from Carswell that he was ready to go and had cleared flight plans with Love Field, Dallas. The long checks had been run through by the crew; the fan jets had been tested; fuel was aboard, and the colonel had alerted the brass at Carswell that
the President of the United States was expected at the base in half an hour. An honor guard was sent to the entrance gate.

Not all communications were as wrinkle-free. Mr. Jack Ruby, a worn face in a disorderly apartment, had dialed his sister's number. He could hear it ring and he knew she must be home because she had been ill. At last the receiver in Apartment I at 3929 Rawlins Street, Dallas, was lifted, and a small voice said hello. Mr. Ruby did not say: “This is Jack.” He assumed she recognized her brother's voice. He was upset, he said, over a full-page ad in the
Dallas News.
Mrs. Eva Grant said she was sorry, but she had not seen it.