CHAPTER 2: DUCK & COVER (Part 3)

    In Dallas, Oswald phoned New York attorney John J. Abt, seeking his representation on the charges pending against him.  Abt declined to take Oswald as a client.  Oswald asked whom he would recommend, saying he himself preferred a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union.

    Abt suggested that Oswald seek the services of another New York attorney, William M. Kunstler.  Kunstler was making a name for himself by defending clients no other lawyer wanted to take on.  Oswald phoned Kunstler--he was given free access to a telephone by the Dallas Police Department.  Kunstler agreed to defend him.

    In Austin, preparations for Governor Connally’s funeral continued.  Connally’s wife, Nellie; Texas’ new governor, Preston Smith; and Secret Service agents were all involved in the planning.  The Secret Service wanted airtight security because President Kennedy would be there.  Agents feared another attempt on Kennedy’s life, and tried to talk him out of going back to Texas.  They failed.  Once Kennedy made up his mind, he did what he intended to do.  He wasn’t always right, but he had few doubts.

    The Secret Service wanted to order crowds kept to side streets, away from the funeral procession.  Nellie Connally refused. “I am not going to keep the people who elected my husband away from him,” she said.  When she threatened to go public, the Secret Service, fearing more bad publicity, yielded.

        #

    The new Duncan & Lefkowitz by-line story ran Monday morning.  When Duncan went to the White House for the daily press briefing, Pierre Salinger aimed his right forefinger at him and brought down his thumb, as if shooting a pistol.

    “That’s not funny, Pierre,” Duncan said.  “Especially now, that’s not funny.”

  Salinger apologized, but he said, “The President is seriously ticked at you.  There is no rift between him and Lyndon.  Suggesting anything different just isn’t true.”

    “The paper got its facts straight.”  Duncan hoped Lefkowitz had his facts straight.  If he didn’t, the Ledger had its tit in a wringer.  How reliable was the younger man?  Duncan wasn’t sure, which worried him.

  “Well, Jack talked to Lyndon, and the Vice President assured him he didn’t mind staying in Washington for Clint Hill’s funeral,” Salinger said.

    “Oh, c’mon, Pierre--what’s Johnson gonna say?”  That wasn’t Duncan.  It was the correspondent for the Chicago Tribune.  Duncan breathed a sigh of relief.  It was nice to have friends, or at least allies.
    “I’m just telling you what happened,” Salinger said.

  He was telling the reporters what the White House wanted them to think happened, which might or might not be the same thing.  That was always true, but not always so obvious as it was today.  A lot of the time, Duncan didn’t think about the difference.  He had to now.  He wondered if Salinger ever did.

    “The President will make everything clear at his press conference tonight,” Salinger said.

        #

  Far more reporters than usual crowded the briefing room for the press conference.  Duncan wondered if the President would ignore the newcomers, the way he did outside St. Matthew’s.  He doubted it; this was too public a forum for snubs like that.

    He also wondered if JFK would ignore him to show his displeasure over the Ledger story.  That would be small, which didn’t mean it couldn’t happen.  Who’d tell a President not to be small if he felt like it?

  Salinger’s briefing didn’t have much meat in it--not surprising, when Kennedy would come on the air at six o’clock on the east coast.  Duncan stayed around the White House, waiting.  He got into a poker game with four other reporters and won fifteen dollars, most of it on a hand where his full house beat a flush.  The guy from the San Francisco Chronicle told him to do something he wasn’t made for.  He just laughed and raked in the money.
 
  He got back to the press room early, and managed to grab a seat in the third row.  Maybe that would help him get called on.  Maybe nothing would, if Kennedy really was mad at him.  He’d have to find out.

  Salinger came back in a couple of minutes before six, a big cigar clamped between his teeth.  Duncan wondered if it was a Havana.  If it was, would that annoy Kennedy or Castro more?  The press secretary made the stogie disappear a split second before the TV cameras went on. Kennedy smoked cigars, too, but not where the public could see him do it.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States,” Salinger intoned.

  In came JFK, looking tanned and fit as usual and standing almost unnaturally straight, as if he was wearing a back brace.  Seeing him there, so masculine, so presidential, the White House press corps burst into applause.

    He grinned at them--and at the cameras, and at the millions of Americans watching him in their living rooms. Unlike Truman and Eisenhower, Presidents past their prime and not especially good-looking to begin with, he understood what TV could do for him, the bond it could forge with the people who voted for him.

  Grinning still, he said, “I’ve never looked forward to taking your questions so much before.”  The reporters broke up.  Duncan laughed along with everybody else.  How could you help it?  JFK went on, “Before I do, though, I’d like to say a few words about what happened last Friday in Dallas.  I don’t like to believe I was the target of an assassination.  Not long before the shots were fired, Mrs. Connally said to me, ‘Mr. President, you can’t say Dallas doesn’t love you.’ ‘That is very obvious,’ I told her.”

    He took a deep breath. “I want to go on believing that.  The accused assassin is in the hands of the law.  I am confident the truth will come out during the investigation and at his trial.”  His face hardened.  “Political murder of any kind has no place in a civil, democratic society.  Political murder of an able, caring public servant like John Connally is particularly heinous.  He was young and bright and handsome and personable.  He had come a long way, and he might have gone further still.  Now he’ll never have the chance.”

    Duncan thought the President could have been talking about himself.  Somewhere down deep, JFK did seem to believe at least one of Oswald’s bullets was meant for him.

    “As for Special Agent Hill, the Bible says it better than I could:  ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’  Clint Hill did just that, and made himself a friend of the American people forever in the doing.  And Officer Tippit was gunned down in the line of duty, investigating the governor’s murder.  Chief Curry has called him ‘a very fine, dedicated officer,’ and he proved the truth of that on Friday.  My heart goes out to his family, and to Agent Hill’s, and to John Connally’s.  We will see justice done on their killer.”

    Kennedy seemed to force a smile.  “Now I’ll take those questions.”

    “Mr. President!”  “Mr. President!”  Everybody shouted at once.  Everybody threw his hand in the air.  Kennedy pointed to the White House correspondent from the Washington Post.  Duncan hated to see the competition get in the first lick, but wasn’t much surprised.

    “Mr. President, do you believe Lee Harvey Oswald was shooting at you rather than at Governor Connally?”

  “As I said, I don’t want to believe that,” Kennedy answered. “Clearly, though, we can’t dismiss the possibility.  Sooner or later, the truth will come out.”

    “Why would anyone want to shoot you, Mr. President?”  The man from the Post got in a followup question.

  “I haven’t the faintest idea, especially when I’m such a fine, charming fellow.”  Kennedy’s disarming grin made the laugh he got even bigger.  He added, “I don’t mean to brag, now.  I read it in the newspapers,” and got another one.

    As things turned out, the President had some pretty definite ideas about who might want to shoot him.  His inner circle was already looking into them.  But he denied any knowledge of that kind.  Ironically, no proof ever surfaced that Lee Harvey Oswald was connected either to the Mafia or, despite his ties to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, to the Castro regime.

    He pointed to another reporter:  Tim Wacker of the New York Times.  “Mr. President, what do you think they’ll do with Oswald?” he asked.

  “If the evidence is strong enough, they’ll indict him.  He’ll go to trial.  If he’s convicted, he’ll suffer the appropriate penalties under the law,” the President answered.

    “Do you expect to be called as a witness?” Wacker asked.

  JFK looked surprised.  “I’m not sure a sitting President can be,” he said slowly.  “I’d have to consult with the Justice Department before I gave you a firm answer.”  His small smile said he meant he would have to talk to his brother.  He went on, “The courts might also have to speak to that issue.  It’s an interesting question, Tim.”

    Duncan scribbled AG to advise on testimony in his notebook.  He’d always been less under Kennedy’s spell than most of his colleagues in the White House press corps.  He wasn’t immune to it, but he did sometimes raise an eyebrow.

    “Is there any truth to reports of a conflict between you and the Vice President, sir?” someone called--Duncan didn’t see who.  He felt the momentary rush that came with having your story be the one people are talking about.  It was followed by the rush of doubt about whether you had nailed it.

    “No, of course not,” Kennedy answered.  “The only conflict is one of scheduling.  The way things worked out, Governor Connally’s funeral and Agent Hill’s are on the same day, almost at the same time.  I was in the car with the governor, and he was the most prominent person killed.  It’s only right that the highest-ranking government official should attend his funeral--and so I will.  It’s that simple.”  He spread his hands.

    “If that’s true, then why did the Ledger run that story about how unhappy the Vice President was?” Howard K. Smith asked.

    “You’d have to ask the Ledger, not me.”  President Kennedy looked around till he spotted Duncan.  “Why did you run that story, Chuck?”

  Everybody looked at Duncan.  He didn’t like being part of the news. He just wanted to report it.  But Kennedy left him no choice.  “Because it’s the truth, Mr. President,” he answered.

    He hoped like hell he was right.  He hadn’t seen Lefkowitz’s notes.  If the younger man took things out of context or built them up past where they ought to go, the Ledger would end up with egg on its face.  And so would Duncan. 

  “Well, I can’t expect you to say anything else, but believe me, that’s not the way it looks from here,” Kennedy said.  Then he pointed to Chet Huntley, who asked a question about the government of South Viet Nam in the wake of the Diem assassination.

    Duncan could barely hear anything else that happened.  All he could think was, My name is on that article, too, dammit! He’d put his reputation on the line for a guy he didn’t even like, who thought covering potholes was a big story, and now the President of the United States was calling him a liar.

        #

    For twenty minutes, Lefkowitz sat silently, watching Duncan read his notes on his conversation with Johnson:  not the transcriptions, but the actual notebook scribbles.  Finally, Duncan looked up and handed back the notebook.   

    “Well,” asked Lefkowitz, dreading the answer, “what do you think?”

  “I think you need better handwriting,” said Duncan, “and you wrote this while he was talking.  But even if he wants to argue about a word or two, it’s plenty clear what his feelings are.”


    “If Kennedy flying to Austin means putting the screws to Lyndon Johnson, that won’t break the President’s heart.  They don’t love each other, way I hear it,” Lefkowitz said.

    “Johnson and Bobby Kennedy hate each other’s guts, and they both have their eyes on 1968,” Duncan agreed.  “I tell you something.  I don’t know which one I’m more afraid of.”

    Johnson was perhaps the most brutally effective leader the Senate had ever known.  If you crossed him, you paid--and went on paying.  But, as Vice President, LBJ didn’t have the weapons he’d enjoyed in the Capitol’s upper chamber.  Still, he was tough, dangerous, devious.  If he ever saw a chance for revenge, he would run with it.

    Bobby Kennedy, on the other hand, took care of the dirty work so his brother could play the good guy.  He had only one agenda: protecting John F. Kennedy.  Because he was Attorney General and had the President’s ear whenever he needed it, you wanted to stay on his good side, too.

    Forced to pick, Duncan feared RFK more, and Lefkowitz feared LBJ.  They asked Callahan to break the tie; the loser would buy the winner a drink at the Dome Club, a low-end bar two blocks away.  Callahan chose Bobby Kennedy because he had “more to lose.”  Lefkowitz, who still had money left from what Callahan gave him to go to Dallas, agreed to pay--for the first drink only.

        #

  That night, when the President came to bed, he found the First Lady still awake, and she had been crying.  Her question was heart-achingly simple:  “Why do they want to kill you, John?  What have you done?”