Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination (49 page)

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Authors: Gus Russo,Harry Moses

BOOK: Where Were You?: America Remembers the JFK Assassination

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From that we read Vince Bugliosi’s book. Now understand: Bugliosi is a prosecutor. He’s not an author or a journalist per se; he is a prosecutor. That’s how he wrote this book. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to go through the facts of what went on that day and all the theories that slowly get broken down. Eventually questions are answered every step of the way that always bring it back to this concept: There is an evil aspect of human nature. There is a sad part of ourselves that is broken up into individuals, and when it lands in an individual as it did with Lee Harvey Oswald, you have to throw up your hands and essentially curse divine providence that makes this happen.

There’s an amazing story I read about Robert Oswald. If you ask your average American about Lee Harvey Oswald’s brother, no one knows that Lee Harvey Oswald had a brother who lived in Dallas, who hung out with his brother all the time, who saw him regularly and knew, “My brother’s a weird guy.” I’m paraphrasing here, but this is essentially what he was. I don’t know why Robert Oswald never appears in any of these conspiracy theories, but he picked up his brother when he moved to Dallas with his Russian bride. Lee Harvey Oswald went to Russia. He was a big celebrity for a while, then he stopped being a big celebrity, and he was just working at a radio factory in Minsk. I’m going to guess that anybody who spends a lot of time in the 1960s working at a radio factory in Minsk might want to get out of Minsk. His beautiful wife, who was also working in Minsk and probably wanted to get out of there, and Lee Harvey Oswald came back from Russia. They had been interviewed a little bit, and he was used to being the guy who had a microphone shoved in front of him. When
he went to Russia, he had all the Russian media saying, “You are a true wonderful man, and thank you for coming, and you’re a bit of a hero, and isn’t it great to have you here?”

When Robert Oswald picked up his brother at Love Field, when he flew in from New York City, Lee Harvey Oswald came off the plane and said to his brother, “Where are the reporters?” He was anticipating his return to Dallas as being a much heralded news story, that he would be something of a big shot. Robert said, “Lee, you’re just some guy.” You hear that kind of story, which tells me, as an actor and as a guy who tells stories, that is human nature. It’s no surprise, nor should it be any shock when you come around to the idea of, well, that’s the man who shot the president of the United States.

Parkland Hospital was/is staffed by folks who were good at what they did. Everything was standard operating procedure. There was a staff on who came in, and all they did was have their morning coffee and flirted with each other, and the day wasn’t going to be anything more unique. They weren’t going to see the president of the United States, even though it was in the papers; it was on the radio. They were just going about their day. Lo and behold: Before they knew it, the shot president of the United States was in their care, was in those rooms, was in their hospital, and was forever a part of their lives, and only a few hours later the man who shot the president of the United States was in their hospital and in their lives and in their care.

History is made up of those types of witnesses who weren’t the principal players, who weren’t the strategists, who weren’t the people that made it happen. They were literally the witnesses who saw it all come down. If my life was changed as a seven-year-old who found out about it because the principal walked into our art class in the afternoon, their lives were forever altered by the fact that they were good at what they did. I don’t think you could find a better microcosm or a better example of what happened to the United States of America as a whole than what happened to those people in Parkland Hospital that day. That’s a fascinating story. There are four stories that we tell in
Parkland
. It’s about the people who were there, but it’s also about Robert Oswald. It’s about James Hosty, the FBI guy who had a brush with Lee Harvey Oswald a few weeks prior. It’s
also about Abe Zapruder, whose life was turned upside down by the fact that he had this new movie camera with the latest version of Kodachrome film inside it.

I don’t think you could find a better microcosm or a better example of what happened to the United States of America as a whole than what happened to those people in Parkland Hospital that day.

I remember reading what could we have expected from the rest of the Kennedy presidency. He was having trouble getting legislation passed in Congress. He had this brewing hot spot that was halfway across the world in Vietnam and Indochina. He would’ve—might’ve even—had a tough reelection campaign in 1964, but at the end of the day, that doesn’t nearly fill me with the same brand of satisfaction as going back through the actual historical record, because what really happened, to me, is always infinitely more fascinating and never stops being a source for the mirror being held up to human nature.

I was fascinated by the movie
JFK
. I thought it was great; I thought it was brilliant. I thought it was filled with moments of very sharply perceptive questioning. At the same time, it’s filled with more hooey than you could possibly imagine. Oliver Stone is a great filmmaker—he won the Academy Award for that film, and rightly so, because it’s one crackerjack piece of filmmaking. But there’s a scene in it where Donald Sutherland, as Mr. X, is explaining in the grimmest
veritas
possible and asking the question, “Why was the Washington, DC, telephone exchange shut down immediately after the assassination of the president of the United States?” You know why it was shut down? Because everybody was on the phone! All the circuits were busy—something that happened all the time if everybody tried to use the phone. You would pick up, and you would dial, and they’d say, “all our lines are down. All of our circuits are busy. Please try again later.” You got the recording. That’s part of that fun thing
that says, “Here’s something that happened, and isn’t there a diabolical answer to this very simple question?” Well, not a diabolical answer at all. It’s loaded with those types of things that you have to chalk up as just being part of the parlor game: The Assassination of the President of the United States.

Making a movie of the Kennedy years? This comes along a lot in my business: Can making this story up—re-creating it, having look-alikes and all the other necessities of making a theatrical film—be better than just the greatest documentary ever made, that you can do on
American Masters
, that
NBC News
could do about the thousand-day presidency of John F. Kennedy? I don’t think you could do as good a job of it. You’re going to be falling down into some degree of melodrama, which at best can be quasi-accurate, and that’s not as good as being accurate or quite simply turgid. I’ll spend my time other ways.

His personal weaknesses haven’t altered my opinion of him. No, we’re all cracked vessels, including all the presidents of the United States. We had a guy who was complicit with the press in hiding the fact that he was in a wheelchair: Franklin Delano Roosevelt—and he drank. He loved his martinis at the end of the day. Not all that stuff goes into the hopper of “Human beings are odd, folks.” Nobody’s perfect; we all have feet of clay, and it’s only some other kind of outrage machines that want to hold up the worst aspects of our weaknesses as being the definition of our total selves. Yeah, without a doubt, those Kennedy years could be described as being racy all right, but so are our baseball heroes. They end up having the same sort of individual lives that don’t diminish the fact of what they meant to this society and what they mean to us in our individual concepts
of them: Kennedy and his family, extraordinarily wealthy, very charismatic and handsome, and dysfunctional to a fault, yes.

We’re all cracked vessels, including all the presidents of the United States.

That what’s great about it, and one of the reasons we’re so fascinated is that they’re a clan. They have this great commonality in that they were part of that generation—Joseph and Rose Kennedy gave birth to this phalanx of people who ended up doing incredible things and being part of us all. From that comes this concept of service that you render. Not all of them, not all of the Kennedys have gone into the same degree of public service, but that first or second generation did. They have massive amounts of sad history and, at the same time, of incredibly impressive achievement, and yet we’ll be turning to them again and again for aspects of our human nature. The best and the worst is all right on display right there.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

The compiling editors would like to thank NBC News senior executive producer David Corvo, former news president Steve Capus, and veteran correspondent Tom Brokaw for their initial faith in the television project on which this book is based. At 30 Rock, everyone working on the
Where Were You?
special performed with tireless professionalism and good humor. They include coordinating producer Clare Duffy, associate producer Loren Burlando, coordinating producer Kallie Ejigu, associate producer Nick Johnson, and talent coordinating producer Jennifer Sherwood. The members of our technical crew likewise performed smoothly at the top of their craft, especially Greg Andracke, Rich White, Shawn Sullivan, Rick Albright, and Everett Wong. Endeavors such as this could not exist without the able assistance of staff interns, and we were most fortunate to have the services of Amanda Hari, Courtney Marmon, Kaila Ward, and Charlotte Lewis. Show editor Pascal Akesson crunched a massive amount of material into a seamless finished product, and Kathleen Berger at Transcript Associates saw that accurate interview transcripts were turned around quickly. Special thanks go to NBC News correspondent Anne Thompson for the use of her pad.

N. S. Bienstock Talent Agency found a home for the book and then performed yeomen’s work in negotiating a complex multiparty agreement. At NSB, special thanks go to agents Steve Sadicario (TV) and Paul Fedorko (book) and able assistant Sammy Bina.

At Lyons Press, editor James Jayo, project editor Meredith Dias, copyeditor Paulette Baker, and publicist Laurie Kenney all performed remarkably on a seemingly impossible deadline. Research assistance and general support for the project were supplied by “Genius” Lucas Lechowski, Dr. Agnieszka Szostakowska, Aaron Sichel, Dale Myers, Jay Greer, Brendan Kennedy, Karen Stefanisko, Randy Lehrer, and the countless archivists and librarians whose expertise and assistance make these projects possible. Jem, Watson, and Z kept things in perspective as always.

Last but not least, sincere thanks go to all of the interviewees who trusted us with their memories.

I
NDEX

“Abraham, Martin, and John
,” 343

Addison’s disease
, 16
, 237–38

Air Force One
, 22
, 25–27
, 351

Alaskan Health Care Federations
, 114

Alcock, James
, 160
, 257

Aldrin, Buzz
, 306

Alger, Bruce
, 87

Alliance for Progress
, 115
, 215
, 220
, 226

Alpha 66 Movement
, 160

Alsop, Joe
, 319