(1) John Hersey wrote about the heroism of John F. Kennedy after interviewing members of the crew of the American Motor Torpedo Boat that sank in the Blackett Straight. The article appeared in the New Yorker on 17th June 1944.
All morning they watched for the plane which they thought would be looking for them. They cursed war in general and PTs in particular. At about ten o'clock the hulk heaved a moist sigh and turned turtle. McMahon and Johnston had to hang on as best they could. It was clear that the remains of the 109 would soon sink. When the sun had passed the meridian, Kennedy said, "We will swim to that small island," pointing to one of a group three miles to the southeast. "We have less chance of making it than some of these other islands here, but there'll be less chance of Japs, too." Those
who could not swim well grouped themselves around a long two-by-six timber with which carpenters had braced the 37-millimetre cannon on deck and which had been knocked overboard by the force of the collision. They tied several pairs of shoes to the timber, as well as the ship's lantern, wrapped in a life jacket to keep it afloat. Thorn took charge of this unwieldy group. Kennedy took McMahon in tow again. He cut loose one end of a long strap on McMahon's Mae West and took the end in his teeth. He swam breast stroke, pulling the helpless McMahon along on his back. It took over five hours to reach the island. Water lapped into Kennedy's mouth through his clenched teeth, and he swallowed a lot. The salt water cut into McMahon's awful burns, but he did not complain. Every few minutes, when Kennedy stopped to rest, taking the strap out of his mouth and holding it in his hand, McMahon would simply say, "How far do we have to go?"
Kennedy would reply, "We're going good." Then he would ask, "How do you feel, Mac?"
McMahon always answered, "I'm OK, Mr Kennedy. How about you?"
In spite of his burden, Kennedy beat the other men to the reef that surrounded the island. He left McMahon on the reef and told him to keep low, so as not to be spotted by Japs. Kennedy went ahead and explored the island. It was only a hundred yards in diameter; coconuts on the trees but none on the ground, no visible Japs. Just as the others reached the island, one of them spotted a Japanese barge chugging along close to shore. They all lay low. The barge went on.
(2) In his autobiography Nikita Khrushchev describes his first meeting with John F. Kennedy after he had beaten Richard Nixon to became president of the United States.
I was impressed with Kennedy. I remember liking his face, which was sometimes stern but which often broke into a good-natured smile. As for Nixon... he was an unprincipled puppet, which is the most dangerous kind. I was very glad Kennedy won the election... I joked with him that we had cast the deciding ballot in his election to the Presidency over that son-of-a-bitch Richard Nixon. When he asked me what I meant, I explained that by waiting to release the U-2 pilot Gary Powers until after the American election, we kept Nixon from being able to claim that he could deal with the Russians; our ploy made a difference of at least half a million votes, which gave Kennedy the edge he needed.
(3) James Reston, a journalist on the New York Times newspaper, travelled to Vienna with President Kennedy when he met Khrushchev for the first time He commented on this meeting three years later in an article for his newspaper.
Khrushchev had studied the events of the Bay of Pigs; he would have understood if Kennedy had left Castro alone or destroyed him but when Kennedy was rash enough to strike at Cuba but not bold enough to finish the job, Khrushchev decided he was dealing with an inexperienced young leader who could be intimidated and blackmailed.
(4) Theodore Sorensen was a friend and speechwriter for John F. Kennedy. He was with Kennedy in Vienna and later wrote about the meeting between these two men.
Neither Kennedy nor Khrushchev emerged victorious or defeated cheerful or shaken. Each had probed the other for weakness and found none. Khrushchev had not been swayed by Kennedy's reason and charm. Kennedy had not been panicked by Khrushchev's tough talk.
(5) Elie Abel's book, The Missiles of October: The Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, was published In 1966. In the book Abel comments on John Kennedy's meeting with Khrushchev in Vienna.
There is reason to believe that Khrushchev took Kennedy's measure at their Vienna meeting in June 1961, and decided this was a young man who would shrink from hard decisions... There is no evidence to support the belief that Khrushchev ever questioned America's power. He questioned only the President's readiness to use it. As he once told Robert Frost, he came to believe that Americans are "too liberal to fight.'
(6) Jack Anderson, speech at the University of Utah (22nd September, 1999)
John F. Kennedy called the best brains he could assemble. He gathered them from as far away as Moscow. Every embassador that served in Moscow that was still alive was present. The brightest people that understood the Soviet Union were present. They met every day for three weeks. They became so cozy that President Kennedy began calling them his crisis club. His crisis club. And they warned. They said, "Mr. President, don't back Khrushchev in to a corner. He is an impulsive man. He is an impulsive man. You remember when he took a shoe off at the United Nations and banged on a desk. He might very well push a button that will send missiles toward the United States. Don't back him in to a corner. Give him room to maneuver." That was their advice.
John F. Kennedy did not take it. He decided, he went before the crisis club after about three weeks and he said, "Gentlemen, I have decided on a boycott. We are going to have to stop any more missiles from going in to Cuba, and we are going to call upon the Soviet Union to withdraw the missiles that they have already planted there." One in the crisis club said, "Mr. President, what you are describing is an act of war. Are you prepared to wage war with the Soviet Union?" The president said, "We'll make it as easy as we can on the Soviets. We'll offer to take our missiles back from Turkey and Greece. They are worn, useless missiles that we were going to take back anyway, but on the world's stage, it may give them, save them some loss of faith. So we will offer to take back our missiles from Turkey and Greece, but we will insist that they remove their missiles from Cuba, and if they don't, we will have to stop them."
One of the members of this group said, "Mr. President, what if they don't stop? What if the Soviets turn you down, and continue sending missiles to Cuba, and you order them to stop, and what if they don't stop?" The president said, "We will follow the procedures of the sea. We will fire a warning shot across the bow, and if they don't stop then, we will attack." One of the members said, "Mr. President, what if the situation were reversed? What if the Soviets tried to stop our ships on the high seas and maybe even fired a warning shot. What would you do?" Jack Kennedy thought that over a bit. "Well," he said, "it would depend on the circumstances, of course, but most likely I would have to take military action." And this man said, "And what makes you think the Soviets won't do the same?" Now there were a lot of Monday morning statesman afterward that said they knew that the Soviets would back down. I am here to report to you, because I had sources in that meeting, in those meetings. They told me exactly what was said. President Kennedy said, "I don' t know what the Soviets will do."
(7) Herbert Parmet, Presidency of John F. Kennedy (1983)
Kennedy recognised the barbaric aspects of racial injustice, but it was an appreciation that remained as removed from personal experience as the poverty that Kennedy had confronted while campaigning in West Virginia. The desperation itself was not felt, and the moral fervor of a Martin Luther King, left him cold. Asked on January 15, 1962 about his campaign promise on civil rights, Kennedy explained that "we are proceeding ahead in a way which will maintain a consensus and will advance this cause."
(8) John F. Kennedy, speech on Congress (28th February, 1963)
One hundred years ago the Emancipation Proclamation was signed by a President who believed in the equal worth and opportunity of every human being. That proclamation was only the first step. Through these long 100 years, while slavery has vanished, progress for the Negro has been too often blocked and delayed. Equality before the law has not always meant equal treatment and opportunity. And the harmful, wasteful, and wrongful results of racial discrimination and segregation still appear in virtually every aspect of national life.
Racial discrimination hampers our economic growth by preventing the maximum development and utilization of our manpower. It hampers our world leadership by contradicting at home the message we preach abroad. It mars the atmosphere of a united and classless society in which the nation rose to greatness. It increases the costs of public welfare, crime, delinquency, and disorder. Above all, it is wrong.
(9) John F. Kennedy, speech on television (11th June, 1963)
This nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal; and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.
It ought to be possible, therefore, for American students of any color to attend any public institution they select without having to be backed up by troops. It ought to be possible for American consumers of any color to receive equal service in places of public accommodation, such as hotels and restaurants, and theaters and retail stores, without being forced to resort to demonstrations in the street.
And it ought to be possible for American citizens of any color to register and to vote in a free election without interference or fear of reprisal.
It ought to be possible, in short, for every American to enjoy the privileges of being American without regard to his race or his color.
This is not a sectional issue. Difficulties over segregation and discrimination exist in every city, in every state of the Union, producing in many cities a rising tide of discontent that threatens the public safety.
Nor is this a partisan issue. In a time of domestic crisis, men of goodwill and generosity should be able to unite regardless of party or politics.
This is not even a legal or legislative issue alone. It is better to settle these matters in the courts than on the streets, and new laws are needed at every level. But law alone cannot make men see right.
We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the Scriptures and is as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities; whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.
If an American, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public; if he cannot send his children to the best public schools available; if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him; if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?
Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay? One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice; they are not yet freed from social and economic oppression.
And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.
Now the time has come for this nation to fulfill its promise.
The events in Birmingham and elsewhere have so increased the cries for equality that no city or state or legislative body can prudently choose to ignore them.
The fires of frustration and discord are burning in every city, North and South. Where legal remedies are not at hand, redress is sought in the streets in demonstrations, parades and protests, which create tensions and threaten violence - and threaten lives.
We face, therefore, a moral crisis as a country and a people. It cannot be met by repressive police action. It cannot be left to increased demonstrations in the streets. It cannot be quieted by token moves or talk. It is a time to act in the Congress, in your state and local legislative body, and, above all, in all of our daily lives.
I am, therefore, asking the Congress to enact legislation giving all Americans the right to be served in facilities which are open to the public - hotels, restaurants and theaters, retail stores and similar establishments. This seems to me to be an elementary right.
I'm also asking Congress to authorize the Federal Government to participate more fully in lawsuits designed to end segregation in public education. We have succeeded in persuading many districts to desegregate voluntarily. Dozens have admitted Negroes without violence.
Other features will also be requested, including greater protection for the right to vote.
But legislation, I repeat, cannot solve this problem alone. It must be solved in the homes of every American in every community across our country.
In this respect, I want to pay tribute to those citizens, North and South, who've been working in their communities to make life better for all.
They are acting not out of a sense of legal duty but out of a sense of human decency. Like our soldiers and sailors in all parts of the world, they are meeting freedom's challenge on the firing line, and I salute them for their honor - their courage.
(10) Alice Roosevelt Longworth, interviewed by Michael Teague in 1981.
Someone should do a study on charm in politics. People like my father, like Franklin, like Jack Kennedy were very engaging to begin with. When you add to that the glamor attached just to being in the White House, they become almost irresistible. The particular charm of the Kennedys was that they had a good deal of fun and often had their tongues in their cheeks at the same time. The Nixons didn't.
The Kennedys reminded me of all those Irish who came over in the 1840s. They seemed to have a rather special quality. There were all these marvelous-looking kitchen maids and policemen, who might easily be Sargent Shriver. I'm not being snobbish. It's just that rare quality which the Irish and no other nation seem to have. I never had much time for old Joe Kennedy but I've always thought Rose Kennedy is an extraordinary woman and it was fun to see her delightful offspring enjoying themselves.
The Kennedys were a fascinating, incredible outfit. There hasn't been anything like them since the Bonapartes. I had great fun with them, especially Jack. He loved to tease and he could be very amusing. He also had a real feeling for learning. Both he and Bobby were eager to supplement their education by learning more. They really wanted to know.
(11) Walter Trohan wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis in the New York Tribune in November 1962.
For the first time in twenty years Americans can carry their head high because the president of the United States had stood up to the premier of Russia and made him back down.
(12) Mario Lazo, a Cuban lawyer was a supporter of the Batista regime that was overthrown by Castro. After the Cuban revolution he fled to the United States. In 1968 he wrote a book called Dagger in the Heart: American Failures in Cubas.
The accounts of the crisis did not make clear that it was a power confrontation, that the power of the USA was incomparably superior to that of the USSR, and that the leaders of both nations knew this to be a fact. The United States, it is worth repeating, could have erased every important Soviet military installation and population centre in two or three hours while the strike capability of the USSR was negligible. Although Kennedy held the trump cards, he granted the Communist Empire a privileged sanctuary in the Caribbean by means of the "no invasion" pledge.
(13) George Brown, In My Way (1970)
Jack Kennedy was one of the two Presidents of the United States whom it has been my privilege to know well. I came to love and admire him in the sense that I did Gaitskell. He was generous, very warm-hearted and a great humanitarian. As I came to know him better, I got to feel less and less that he was a doer. A thinker, a man of imagination, a man of inspiration, a man of feeling - yes. But even though I be in a minority, here again I think he was not what I regard as a great doer. I know that in writing this I shall be reminded of Cuba, where Kennedy seemed to act with the utmost decisiveness. Yet I have a nagging feeling that Cuba was in a way a decision made for him. But he charmed Khrushchev as he charmed me and as he charmed everybody else. All I can say here is that there has been no politician, Gaitskell apart, in whose presence I have felt more fascinated, charmed and excited about the possibilities of power.
(14) Robert S. McNamara interviewed on CNN in June 1996.
The domino theory... was the primary factor motivating the actions of both the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations, without any qualification. It was put forward by President Eisenhower in 1954, very succinctly: If the West loses control of Vietnam, the security of the West will be in danger. "The dominoes will fall," in Eisenhower's words. In a meeting between President Kennedy and President Eisenhower, on January 19, 1961 - the day before President Kennedy's inauguration - the only foreign policy issue fully discussed dealt with Southeast Asia. And there's even today some question as to exactly what Eisenhower said, but it's very clear that a minimum he said... that if necessary, to prevent the loss of Laos, and by implication Vietnam, Eisenhower would be prepared for the U.S. to act unilaterally - to intervene militarily.
And I think that this was fully accepted by President Kennedy and by those of us associated with him. And it was fully accepted by President Johnson when he succeeded as President. The loss of Vietnam would trigger the loss of Southeast Asia, and conceivably even the loss of India, and would strengthen the Chinese and the Soviet position across the world, weakening the security of Western Europe and weakening the security of North America. This was the way we viewed it; I'm not arguing (we viewed it) correctly - don't misunderstand me - but that is the way we viewed it. ...
There were three groups of individuals among his advisers. One group believed that the situation (in South Vietnam) was moving so well that we could make a statement that we'd begin withdrawals and complete them by the end of 1965. Another group believed that the situation wasn't moving that well, but that our mission was solely training and logistics; we'd been there long enough to complete the training, if the South Vietnamese were capable of absorbing it, and if we hadn't proven successful, it's because we were incapable of accomplishing that mission and therefore we were justified in beginning withdrawal. The third group believed we hadn't reached the point where we were justified in withdrawing, and we shouldn't withdraw.
Kennedy listened to the debate, and finally sided with those who believed that either we had succeeded, or were succeeding, and therefore could begin our withdrawal; or alternatively we hadn't succeeded, but that ... we'd been there long enough to test our ability to succeed, and if we weren't succeeding we should begin the withdrawal because it was impossible to accomplish that mission. In any event, he made the decision (to begin withdrawing advisers) that day, and he did announce it. It was highly contested...
Kennedy hadn't said before he died whether, faced with the loss of Vietnam, he would (completely) withdraw; but I believe today that had he faced that choice, he would have withdrawn rather than substitute US combat troops for Vietnamese forces to save South Vietnam. I think he would have concluded that US combat troops could not save Vietnam if Vietnam troops couldn't save it. That was the statement he in effect made publicly before his death, but at that time he hadn't had to choose between losing Vietnam, on the one hand, or putting in US combat troops on the other. Had he faced the decision, I think he would have accepted the loss of Vietnam and refused to put in US combat troops.
(15) Kenneth O'Donnell, Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1983)
Kennedy had told (Kenneth O'Donnell) in the spring of 1963 that he could not pull out of Vietnam until he was reelected, "So we had better make damned sure I am reelected." ... At a White House reception on Christmas eve, a month after he succeeded to the presidency, Lyndon Johnson told the Joint Chiefs: "Just get me elected, and then you can have your war."
(16) Leroy Fletcher Prouty, The Secret Team (1973)
During those hectic months of late summer in 1963 when the Kennedy Administration appeared to be frustrated and disenchanted with the ten-year regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon, it approved the plans for the military coup d'état that would overthrow President Diem and get rid of his brother Nhu. The Kennedy Administration gave its support to a cabal of Vietnamese generals who were determined to remove the Ngos from power. Having gone so far as to withdraw its support of the Diem government and to all but openly support the coup, the Administration became impatient with delays and uncertainties from the generals in Saigon, and by late September dispatched General Maxwell D. Taylor, then Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Secretary of Defense McNamara to Saigon.
Upon their return, following a brief trip, they submitted a report to President Kennedy, which in proper chronology was the one immediately preceding the remarkable one of December 21, 1963. This earlier report said, among other things "There is no solid evidence of the possibility of a successful coup, although assassination of Diem and Nhu is always a possibility." The latter part of this sentence contained the substantive information. A coup d'état, or assassination is never certain from the point of view of the planners; but whenever United States support of the government in power is withdrawn and a possible coup d'état or assassination is not adamantly opposed, it will happen. Only three days after this report, on October 5, 1963, the White House cabled Ambassador Lodge in Saigon: "There should be... urgent covert effort . . . to identify and build contact with possible alternate leadership." Knowledge of a statement such as this one made by the ostensible defenders and supporters of the Diem regime was all those coup planners needed to know. In less than one month Diem was dead, along with his brother.
Thus, what was considered to be a first prerequisite for a more favorable climate in Vietnam was fulfilled. With the Ngo family out of the way, President Kennedy felt that he had the option to bring the war to a close on his own terms or to continue pressure with covert activities such as had been under way for many years. Because the real authors were well aware of his desires, there was another most important statement in the McNamara-Taylor report of October 2, 1963: "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time...." (the end of 1965).
(17) I. F. Stone, a journalist, wrote an article on Kennedy after he was assassinated in 1963.
What if the Russians had refused to back down and remove their missiles from Cuba? What if they had called our bluff and war had begun, and escalated? How would the historians of mankind, if a fragment survived, have regarded the events of October?... Since this is the kind of bluff that can easily be played once too often, and that his successors
may feel urged to imitate, it would be well to think it over carefully before canonizing Kennedy as an apostle of peace.
(18) Douglas Horne, JFK Forum (23rd July, 2004)
In spite of having lead a rather reckless personal life of apparent sexual excess - something I do not care about personally one way or the other - JFK's popularity continues to grow. I think this is for substantial, not insubstantial, reasons.
It is now apparent, with the release of many classified documents, the writing of many memoirs, and the release of many secret office recordings, that JFK was a real skeptic about the use of military force in combat, and that although he believed in a very strong military readiness posture for the United States, and took his Cold War responsibilities extremely seriously, he repeatedly used military force, or rather was prepared to use it, only as a last resort, if all other options had been exhausted. For example:
(1) He refused to bail out the failed CIA Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba with U.S. troops, as the JCS desired him to do;
(2) He ultimately refused to either bomb or invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He made all preparations to do so, and made sure the USSR saw these preparations, and used this impending readiness as a powerful diplomatic tool to leverage Kruschev, but his daily strategy during this crisis was to continue to prepare for military action, while daily stalling the hawks who demanded the use of military force. In doing so he probably prevented a nuclear war, for we now know that the Russian rocket forces in Cuba had permission to use tactical nuclear weapons (launched by FROG missiles) against any US invasion forces, WITHOUT the advance permission of Moscow. As Robert McNamara said in 1992, if thousands of US sailors and Marines and Army troops had been "fried" invading Cuba, it would have demanded a retaliatory response by JFK and the nuclear war with the USSR would then have probably been unstoppable, escalating day-by-day into a true Armageddon. Ted Sorenson, who knew JFK's political instincts better than anyone else, has said that even though the Cuban invasion was "imminent" at the time Kruschev capitulated and agreed to remove the missiles, he was confident JFK would have found ways and means to stall the hawks in the USG and delay, or forestall, an invasion on a day-by-day basis, even though it was theoretically approved for Tuesday (I think), 2 days after Kruschev capitulated.
(3) JFK clearly was intent on withdrawing form Vietnam in 1965; he was disgusted with the entire military and political situation in Vietnam, was angry that we had become enmeshed and entrapped there with so many advisors, and was determined to right this error after his re-election.
(4) JFK took the Cold War seriously, but in the right way, and over the right issues. Berlin was important (because it did involve serious issues of not appeasing a superpower bully, whose appetite might then only be whetted for more); Vietnam (which was increasingly apparent to be a local civil war and not truly a vital superpower issue) was not. JFK wanted to defeat communism, but NOT on the battlefield...he wanted to defeat them in the Space Race, the ultimate superpower propaganda contest in which national greatness and the validity of two competing systems were going to be measured by technological prowess and economic strength, not by a destructive war. JFK wanted to promote the positive values of the West and the USA through volunteer service...through the Peace Corps.
(5) JFK wanted above all else to avoid an accidental, unintentional World War in the Nuclear Age. His own WW II experiences (in which he learned to be very skeptical about military leadership and so-called expertise), his study of Barbara Tuchman's book "The Guns of August" about WW I, and the fresh memory of the Korea stalemate in Asia all made him very cautious about the use of military force. He wanted to go to war only if we HAD TO...not because the hawks in the USG wanted to. And if we "had to" go to war, he wanted to ensure it was over a vital interest like Soviet aggression in Europe, not over a sideshow in Southeast Asia where US interest were not directly threatened.
(6) This man chose a life of public service, when he could, instead, have rolled up in a ball of self-pity and lived a selfish life of luxury all alone, feeling sorry for himself because of his serious illness (addison's disease) and his back pain (which was constant and unremitting). Yet all those who knew him well said he never uttered a word of self-pity, and had a genuine optimism about the future of man, about the positive role [and great responsibility] of the United States in the 20th century, and genuinely believed in the credo of public service that he so openly promoted.
(7) JFK became very courageous on civil rights in 1963, after a couple of years of dithering in 1961 and 1962. He could not duck the issue any longer, and strongly and firmly came down in favor of equal opportunity in education and proposed a very bold civil rights bill which LBJ got passed in his memory as part of the JFK legacy after his assassination.
(8) JFK's Peace Speech at the American University in June 1963 was a truly remarkable document, just as the Test Ban Treaty in September of 1963 was a noteworthy accomplishment. The Test Ban Treaty was his proudest achievement, and the Peace Speech (which rejected a military PAX AMERICANA and asked Americans to re-evaluate their altitudes about the Soviet Union) challenged both Americans and the Soviets to end the Cold War...a full generation before it finally happened.
In conclusion, regardless of whether people have advanced degrees or not, or think about politics frequently or infrequently, they have a pretty good sense of these things today in America; following the disaster of LBJ's War in Vietnam, and the current disillusionment over America's Iraq adventure, JFK's sober caution in foreign affairs looks pretty good to most Americans. (His one big screw-up was the Bay of Pigs; he openly acknowledged this, and he learned valuable lessons from it about being cautious about the so-called expertise of others, and about the limits of military power.) So does his intelligent, well-informed and reasoned (but not jingoistic) patriotism, his encouragement of public service, his insatiable curiosity, his support of the arts in America, and his optimism. So does his correct and courageous (if a bit belated) stand on civil rights in America.
America was on the right road in 1963 when he died. After his death, with the exception of the Apollo Moon Landing program and other space initiatives which he began, everything else went downhill fast in the 1960s. Americans know, and appreciate these facts. It is the mainstream historians who get it wrong when they say JFK was not a great President; the man in the street knows better. If he had lived to serve a full 8 years, I think the mainstream historians would treat him more kindly because they would have more concrete, completed accomplishments to write about. (Mainstream historians recognize concrete accomplishments rather than potential, and possibilities, and could-have-beens.) JFK was great because he had the country going in the right direction, avoided a nuclear war (and appeasement) through his caution and firm resolve during the missile crisis, promoted public service and the arts, and was responsible for the robust space program which may be the principal accomplishment for which the the post-WW II USA is remembered 500 years from now (as JFK himself predicted).
(19) Alistair Cooke, President Kennedy Assassinated, Manchester Guardian (23rd November, 1963)
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States, was shot during a motorcade drive through downtown Dallas this afternoon. He died in the emergency room of the Parkland Memorial Hospital 32 minutes after the attack. He was 46 years old. He is the third President to be assassinated in office since Abraham Lincoln and the first since President McKinley in 1901.
In the late afternoon the Dallas police took into custody a former Marine, one Lee H. Oswald, aged 24, who is alleged to have shot a policeman outside a theatre. He is said to have remarked only, "It is all over now." He is the chairman of a group called the "Fair Play for Cuba Committee," and is married to a Russian girl. He is described at the moment as "a prime suspect."
The new President is the Vice-President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, a 55-year-old native Texan, who took the oath of office in Dallas at five minutes to four at the hands of a woman judge and later arrived in Washington with the body of the dead President.
This is being written in the numbed interval between the first shock and the harried attempt to reconstruct a sequence of fact from an hour of tumult. However, this is the first assassination of a world figure that took place in the age of television, and every network and station in the country took up the plotting of the appalling story. It begins to form a grisly pattern, contradicted by a grisly preface: the projection on television screens of a happy crowd and a grinning President only a few seconds before the gunshots.
The President was almost at the end of his two-day tour of Texas. He was to make a lunch speech in the Dallas Trade Mart building and his motor procession had about another mile to go. He had had the warmest welcome of his trip from a great crowd at the airport. The cries and pleas for a personal touch were so engaging that Mrs Kennedy took the lead and walked from the ramp of the presidential plane to a fence that held the crowd in. She was followed quickly by the President, and they both seized hands and forearms and smiled gladly at the people.
The Secret Service and the police were relieved to get them into their car, where Mrs Kennedy sat between the President and John B. Connally, the Governor of Texas. The Dallas police had instituted the most stringent security precautions in the city's history: they wanted no repetition of the small but disgraceful brawl that humiliated Adlai Stevenson in their city when he attended a United Nations rally on October 24.
The motorcade was going along slowly but smoothly three muffled shots, which the crowd first mistook for fireworks, cracked through the cheers. One hit the shoulder blade and the wrist of Governor Connally who was taken with the President to the hospital, where his condition is serious.
The other brought blood trickling from the back of the sitting President's head. His right arm flopped from a high wave of greeting and he collapsed into the arms of Mrs Kennedy, who fell unharmed. She was heard to cry "Oh, No" and sat there all the way cradling his head in her lap. As some people bayed and screamed and others fell to the ground, and hid their faces, the secret service escort broke into two groups, one speeding the President's car to the hospital: and another joined a part of the heavy police escort in wheeling off in pursuit of a man fleeing across some railroad tracks. Nothing came of this lead.
The President was taken to the emergency room of the Parkland Hospital and Governor Connally was taken into the surgery. Mrs Kennedy went in with the living President and less than an hour later came out with the dead man in a bronze coffin, which arrived shortly after two priests had administered the last rites of the Roman Catholic Church.
The body was escorted by Generals Clifton and McHugh, the President's chief military and air force aides, to the Dallas Airport and flown thence to Washington.
Within an hour of the President's death, the Secret Service had found a sniper's nest inside the building from which the first witnesses swore the bullets had been fired. It is a warehouse for a school text book firm, known as the Texas School Depository, on the corner of Elm and Houston Streets.
In an upper room, whose open window commanded the route of the Presidential motorcade, the Servicemen found the remains of a fried chicken and a foreign-made rifle with a telescopic sight. Alongside it lay three empty cartridges.
(20) James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable (2008)
Only nine days after his American University address, Kennedy had ratified a CIA program contradicting it. Kennedy’s regression can be understood in the political context of the time. He was, after all, an American politician, and the Cold War was far from over. For the remaining five months of his life, John Kennedy continued a policy of sabotage against Cuba that he may have seen as a bone thrown to his barking CIA and military advisers but was in any case a crime against international law. It was also a violation of the international trust that he and Nikita Khrushchev had envisioned and increasingly fostered since the missile crisis. Right up to his death, Kennedy remained in some ways a Cold Warrior, in conflict with his own soaring vision in the American University address.
Mary Ferrell Foundation, Wikipedia: Assassination of John F. Kennedy, History Matters, Assassination Archives and Research Center, Crime Library: Assassination of John F. Kennedy, JFK, JFK Assassination, John McAdams: JFK Assassination, JFK Assassination: The Bush Connection, BBC Assassination of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Assassination Archives, Martin Shackleford Archive, Warren Commission Report, John McAdams: An Assessment, JFK Lancer, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Assassination: Information, Kennedy Assassination, John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Assassination, History Place: JFK Assassination, John F. Kennedy Quotes, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum,President John F. Kennedy, House Select Committee on Assassinations, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, History Matters Archive, Assassination of John F. Kennedy, The Murder of President Kennedy, JFK Assassination Testimony, Dealey Plaza Revisited, Nook of Eclectic Inquiry, Electronic Assassinations Newsletter, Deep PoliticsReal History Archives, JFK: Breaking the News, Unconventional Warrior, Academic JFK Assassination, The Kennedy Assassination, The Taking of America, Prouty Reference Site, Assassination Science, Dealey Plaza, JFK Murder Solved, Exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, JFK and Cuba, JFK Assassination, Dealey Plaza UK, Fair Play Magazine, Kennedy Assassination, Reopen the JFK Case, Ron Ecker's JFK Website |
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