Truth About the Assassination, The (Roberts), xvii
Tuckerman, Nancy, xiv, 236
Tumulty, Joseph, 43
Turner, Patrolman F. M., 130
Turnure, Pamela, 42, 117, 246–247, 357, 408
u
Udall, Sec. Stewart, 137, 212, 616
United Nations, 26, 282–283, 372, 487
United Press International (UPI), 42, 109, 132, 133, 181–182, 191–192, 212–213, 310, 355–356
United States Supreme Court, 89–90
University of Dallas, 145
Uzee, Norris, 244–245
V
Valachi, Joseph, 92
Valenti, Jack, 307, 318, 337, 354, 396, 463–464, 531–532, 543, 560, 595–596, 616, 663, 690
Van Haesen, John, 609, 647–648
Vegas Club (Dallas), 151, 565, 575–576, 633–634, 634, 658
Victoria, Queen, 338, 346, 488
Vienna Summit Conference, 24, 44
Viet Nam, 25, 79, 81, 136–138
Vogelsinger, Sue, 619
Volpert, Ann, 526
Volstead Act, 136
w
Wade, District Attorney Henry, 283–284, 290, 330–331, 377, 471–473, 521, 526, 569–570, 586–592, 614–615, 617–619, 626–635, 643–644, 650, 654, 659
Waldman, William J., 675–676
Waldorf-Astoria Hotel (New York), 72
Waldo, Thayer, 589
Walker, C. T., 263–265, 277–278, 281
Walker, Gen. Edwin, 14, 160, 325, 495, 541, 688
Walker, Roy, 50–51
Walsh, Dr. John, 412
Walter Reed Hospital (Washington, D.C.), 357
Walther, Carolyn, 165
Walton, William, 489–490, 551, 637–638
Ward, Judge Theron, 288, 290
Warren, Sgt., 645, 655
Warren Commission Report, xvi, 656n, 686, 690–691
Warren, Earl, 144, 409, 414–415
Washington Cathedral, 436–437
Washington, George, 37, 681
Washington Hotel Building (Washington, D.C.), 337, 523
Washington Post, 23–24
Weatherford, Harry, 361
Webster, Chuck, 604, 628
Webster, Jane Carolyn, 243
Weissman, Bernard, 98–100, 151, 644
Weitzman, Deputy Constable Seymour, 183, 207–208
Wells, Lt. T. P., 456–457, 484–485
West, Bernard, 36–37, 466
Westbrook, Capt. W. R., 188–189
Western Union, 133
Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, 310, 318
Westminster Cathedral (London), 667
Westphal, Roy, 95
West, Troy, 56–58
Whalen, Tom, 297
Whaley, William, 217–219
While England Slept (J. F. Kennedy), xv–xvi
White, Byron, 579
White, Dr., 201
“White House switchboard,” 6
Wicker, Tom, 42, 265–266, 298, 333
Williams, Bonnie Ray, 57, 126–129, 154–155, 180–181
Williams, Doyle, 222
Wilson, Woodrow, 43, 436–437
Wirtz, Sec. Willard, 212, 343–344, 616
WNEW (New York City), 634–635
Wolf, Monsignor Vincent, 72–73, 78, 232
Worrell, James R., 172, 181
Wright, James (Jim), 61, 62, 79, 369
Wright, Lloyd, 636, 637
Wright, O. P., 244, 296–297
Wright, Zephyr, 518
Y
Yarborough, Senator Ralph, 20–21, 44–47, 61, 62, 70, 87–88, 100–103, 109, 117, 118, 123, 129–130, 132, 173, 175, 183, 196, 245
Youngblood, Rufus (Rufe), 47–48, 54, 132, 172, 173, 183, 195, 197–199, 248, 251, 261–262, 300, 311, 416, 433, 531–532, 542, 561, 595
z
Zangara (Assassin), 547
Zapruder, Abraham, xvii, 163, 174–175, 687
Zboril, Charles, 41
Zoppi, Toni, 120
About the Author
JIM BISHOP was a syndicated columnist and author of many bestselling books, including The Day Lincoln Was Shot, The Day Christ Died, and A Day in the Life of President Kennedy. Born in Jersey City, New Jersey, Bishop died in 1987.
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Also by Jim Bishop
A Bishop’s Confession
The Birth of the United States
Mother Tongue
FDR’s Last Year
A Day in the Life of President Johnson
Jim Bishop: Reporter
A Day in the Life of President Kennedy
Honeymoon Diary
The Murder Trial of Judge Peel
The Day Christ Was Born
Some of My Very Best
Go with God
The Day Christ Died
Fighting Father Duffy
The Golden Ham
The Day Lincoln Was Shot
The Girl in Poison Cottage
Parish Priest
The Mark Hellinger Story
The Glass Crutch
Copyright
Cover design by Nicholas Bilardello
Cover photograph © Bettmann/Corbis
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1968 by Funk & Wagnalls.
THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SHOT. Copyright © 1968 by Jim Bishop. All rights reserved. under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
The following have granted permission to use copyrighted material:
From “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from Complete Poems by Robert Frost. Copyright 1923 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. Copyright 1951 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
From Camelot. Copyright 1960 by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Used by permission of Chappell & Co., Inc., New York.
First Harper Perennial edition published 1992, reissued 2013.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-0-06-229059-5
EPub Edition November 2013 ISBN 9780062319937
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* This book was originally under contract with Random House, but for reasons completely apart from the Kennedys’ pressure on that publisher, I decided to have Funk & Wagnalls bring it out.
* Washington time is one h
our later than at Dallas.
* Within a year, George Jackson was dead of cancer.
* On October 26, 1963, while showing the private quarters of the Kennedy family to the author and his wife.
* He brought it up to the author at the White House, October 28, 1963.
* Mr. Kennedy referred to this matter obliquely several times during the author’s stay at the White House.
* Nixon confided these plans to me at the Key Biscayne Hotel, Miami, Fla., in January 1963.
* It has been suggested that, in a group of carts, this bullet may have fallen from Kennedy’s. The President was still lying on his cart at this time, and, of those carts at the elevator, Connally’s was the only one involving a bullet wound.
* Mr. O’Donnell denied that he was asked about Air Force One. There is no doubt that Johnson, thinking ahead, wanted to show that, even in tragedy, the continuity of government would be smooth. Therefore, from the start, he wanted to be aboard 26000 with his dead chieftain and the widow.
* This was a lapse of memory on all sides. Although the Constitution of the United States does not require a time element, the oath should be taken as quickly as possible to ensure smooth continuity of government in the executive branch.
* Cloy’s alleged statement, “We were rehearsing for the funeral a week,” led to the ugly rumor that Defense Secretary McNamara had the army practicing for the burial of John F. Kennedy before the trip to Dallas.
* The doctors complained bitterly that they were misquoted or quoted out of context. In truth, they were incompetent to discuss the wounds of the President because they had not examined the body. They had no knowledge of the crime, the scene of it, the trajectory of projectiles, or whether wounds could be called entrance or exit. They could have drawn up a preliminary draft of treatment and given it to Dr. Burkley, the President’s physician. Instead they chose to lend themselves to a press conference. As a result, Burkley could not discuss the President’s wounds with competence at the Bethesda autopsy.
* The spot where Oswald, who had shot two strangers, would be shot by one on Sunday morning.
* The cost of the casket was $3900. Oneal sent bills to Mrs. Kennedy for a year. He says that the family never paid for it. A government agency got in touch with him fourteen months later and said it would give him $3400—no more. He accepted. The check came from the government. Because he demanded proper payment, his business in Dallas fell off 50 percent.
* Four months after the assassination, I sat with Rose and Joe Kennedy at their home in Palm Beach. Mrs. Kennedy said: “I have not heard from ‘Mrs. Kennedy’ since the funeral.”
* O’Brien and Bundy were the only Kennedy men who remained with Lyndon Johnson. Both, as noted by Charles Roberts in the The Truth About the Assassination, were branded by the Clan Kennedy as “traitors.” Bundy’s response was that the presidency is bigger than any man. O’Brien shrugged and said: “You do what needs to be done.”
* Throughout the book, all times given are Central Standard. At this time, it is 4:20 P.M. in Dallas, 5:20 P.M. in Washington.
* After Oswald was shot to death by Jack Ruby on Sunday, November 24, 1963, the first cell was occupied by the nightclub owner.
* A few months later, in Atlantic City, N.J., I saw O’Donnell holding a door open at the back of the limousine. Jokingly, I said: “Ah, you are now the Johnson door-opener.” He grinned. “Yeah,” he said. “I hold doors for him.” Shortly after, he quit to run for office in Massachusetts and lost.
* All final decisions were made by Mrs. Kennedy. Archbishop O’Boyle was the ranking Catholic churchman in Washington. Mrs. Kennedy did not want him. She substituted Richard Cardinal Cushing of Boston, a family friend. As a sop, O’Boyle’s auxiliary bishop, Philip Hannan, was permitted to read excerpts from President Kennedy’s speeches at the funeral Mass.
* At the White House a month before he died, President Kennedy told me that, as a matter of practice, he always said a night prayer but never a morning one. Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, seldom uttered a formal prayer night or day, but inwardly said: “Thank God” whenever he heard good news about the welfare of his family or his nation.
* At the White House in June 1965, President Johnson told me that, even in the midst of the fight with Kennedy for the Democratic nomination, he was certain that he would not win it. When he was elected Vice-President, Johnson counted on four, or at most eight, years in the office and was certain that he would be able to retire to his ranch in January 1969 at the age of sixty.
* As Dr. Humes expected, his call to Parkland and Dr. Perry the following morning altered his thinking. He was told that the tracheostomy in the neck had originally been a wound and had been expanded to improve breathing. A tube had been inserted. Cardiac arrest occurred and closed-chest massage was futile. Humes, Boswell, and Finck realized that the shot in the shoulder strap muscles had come from above and behind, emerging at the bottom of the throat. It was a wound from which the President would probably have recovered without incident.
* Attorney John Abt of New York was spending a weekend with his wife in a cabin they owned in a farm area of Connecticut. It was not equipped with television or radio. The next day, when reporters located him, Mr. Abt said that he doubted he could defend Lee Harvey Oswald because of his legal commitments. Failing to contact John Abt, Lee Harvey Oswald phoned his wife Saturday but found that the Life magazine men had taken her and his mother from the Paine household. He asked Mrs. Paine to contact John Abt in New York.
* The author wants to make it clear that no record was kept of any of the interrogations of Oswald. He makes no claim that the questions and answers are in proper sequence. From interviews and recollections of persons who were present, these scenes represent an approximation of what was said. There is no doubt that some of them are not properly juxtaposed, in spite of information from Dallas and Washington observers.
* In the morning, Dr. Humes called Dallas and spoke to Dr. Malcolm Perry of Parkland Memorial Hospital. The Bethesda doctor identified himself and said that he could not discuss the findings of the necropsy, but he would like to know more about the tracheostomy. Perry said that when President Kennedy arrived at the hospital, the wound in the lower anterior portion of the throat was noticeable. Bloody bubbled air was standing in it. There was no time to dwell on it or even to measure it for size. Medically, breathing had to be restored at once if the patient was not already dead. The hole in the throat was enlarged and incised by Dr. Perry, who stuck a tube in it. What had appeared to be a surgical incision was proved to be an exit wound.
* Untrue. Oswald appears to have spoken the truth when he said that the map was used in conjunction with job opportunities published in the newspapers. His habit, before he secured work at the Depository, was to mark off several places where a job might be obtained and then try to figure the cheapest way to get to them by using a bus and free transfers. The X at the Depository building turned out to be the final place he looked for work. There were no street markings showing the route of the President’s motorcade.
* Untrue. Johnston had yet to read the assassination charge to Oswald.
* In cases where feelings are described, they are culled from later recollections of that person or from testimony of persons who were at the scene. In this case, the feelings of Ruby come from his depositions after shooting Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963.
* The Bar Association of Dallas County did not concern itself with the rights of the prisoner to counsel until the following day. An Eastern dean of a law school phoned a Dallas attorney about the matter of counsel. The Dallas lawyer phoned H. Louis Nichols, president of the Dallas Bar Association. Mr. Nichols phoned a criminal lawyer to “refresh my memory.” The criminal lawyer said there was an obligation to appoint counsel after a prisoner has been indicted. Mr. Nichols asked himself if the bar association owed anything to Oswald. Saturday afternoon he visited Oswald in his cell. The prisoner was interested in representation by “John Abt” or someone fr
om the Civil Liberties Union. Nichols did not know Abt or a lawyer from ACLU. The interview was friendly and fruitless.
* Each of the bullets fired at President Kennedy weighed 161 grains: total 483 grains. The final accounting is: (1) The first shot probably missed the car on the right side, ricocheting off the curb and spraying James Tague at the Commerce Street underpass; 161 grains; (2) the bullet on the stretcher weighed 158.6 grains; (3) fragment found in front section of President’s car: 44.6 grains; (4) fragment on front floor of car: 21 grains; (5) two fragments from Kennedy’s head: 1.65 grains and 0.15 grains; (6) fragment from wrist of Governor Connally; .5 of a grain; (7) fragment from rear rug of car: .9 of a grain; (8) fragment from rear floorboard of car: .7 of a grain; (9) fragment from rear carpet of car: .7 of a grain. Total found: 228.80 grains; first bullet missing: 161 grains. Total: 389.80. Unaccounted for: 93.20 grains.
* The dent was found to have been made in a New York garage when someone tried to close the convertible top and hit the aluminum frame of the windshield.
* One of the small mysteries is what happened to the Dallas casket. The Department of the Navy professed ignorance. Bethesda Hospital, at that time and for several years thereafter, was under the command of Captain R. O. Canada. In May 1968, Canada sent word to the author that he would not be permitted to see the empty autopsy room, unless he had an “okay from the White House.” The public relations officers professed to know nothing of the disposal of the Dallas casket.
* In testimony before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, J. P. Johnston swore he apprised Lee Harvey Oswald of his constitutional rights “again.” Chief Jesse Curry, a witness in the same hearings, swore: “I do not recall whether he did or not.”