Reflections On the JFK Assassination
SPEAKERS
Jim du Bois, James Norwood
Jim du Bois 00:00
Dialogue Minnesota...conversations about the issues that matter to you. I'm Jim du Bois. November 22, 1963, was a typical Friday in the United States. With Thanksgiving celebrated on the following Thursday, many people were looking forward to a short workweek and the upcoming holiday season. But all that changed when President John F. Kennedy was cut down by gunfire in a Dallas motorcade. For the next four days, Americans saw history unfold on their living room televisions. 59 years later, the fascination with the Kennedy assassination continues. This week on Dialogue Minnesota, a conversation with retired University of Minnesota Humanities Professor James Norwood, who has extensively studied the assassination and its aftermath. Professor Norwood, take us back to that day, Friday, November 22, 1963. The presidential motorcade was coming through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. What happened around 1230 Central time in the afternoon?
James Norwood 01:03
Yes, on this occasion, President Kennedy was eager to start his reelection campaign for 1964. He went to Texas expressly to mend some fences. He was not popular as a whole in Texas, but he was warmly greeted by the crowds in the various cities of Texas when he arrived. Now on Friday, the 22nd, he arrived in Dallas, got off the airplane got into the limousine. And these extraordinary crowds greeted him as he moved through the city. One can see the images of the progression of the limousine, the motorcade and really be shocked at the lack of security, the lack of protections that the President had.
Jim du Bois 01:57
Once the President is in Dealey Plaza in his open limousine and shots ring out, why don't you point out where the principal players were at this time in Dealey Plaza and take us through who they were and how they have played a part in the continuing story about the JFK assassination.
James Norwood 02:16
Actually, if you'll permit me to give our audience a kind of tour of the Dealey Plaza site, and we can see some of the eyewitness testimony, where the people were standing, where, what they reported, we might be able to break down this particular question to shed light on not only how many shots were fired, but the direction from which the shots came. Keep in mind that the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald fired three rounds. They all came, of course, from behind the Presidential limousine. Now, one key witness and one of really unimpeachable character is William Newman. Bill Newman and his family were the closest in proximity to the President as the motorcade was lumbering down Elm Street. And William Newman is depicted immediately after the assassination on the ground, as he urged his family to basically take cover hit the ground, and one can actually see photographs of Mr. Newman covering, trying to protect his children. Mr. Newman claimed that he heard shots coming from behind him and sensed the bullets actually whizzing by. That is why he urged his family to duck for cover. Then immediately across the street from Bill Newman, standing in the area of the plaza lawn, this was the eyewitness, Jean Hill. Jean was standing right next to Mary Mormon, who took one of the most famous photographs of the assassination, and in that photograph, we can see Jean's actual position, facing the knoll area and the picket fence. Jean testified before the Warren Commission that she heard four to six shots and that she actually saw the flash of light and a rifle behind the picket fence. If we then turn to Elm Street, two cars behind the Presidential limousine, Senator Yarborough of Texas later testified that he saw a puff of smoke coming from the area of the picket fence, and he actually then smelled the smoke as the limousine and the motorcade proceeded down Elm Street. Yarbrough witnessed that. Directly in front of him was the follow-up car with the Secret Service and two of the most loyal assistants of President Kennedy, Dave Powers and Kenneth O'Donnell. Both Powers and O'Donnell described the event as an ambush as if they were walking into a fusillade of gunshots, certainly more than three. Dave Powers later after seeing the Oliver Stone film, said he got it right in the depiction and recreation of the assassination scene. Then we have S.N. Holland, who's standing up on top of the freeway overpass, it was actually railroad track. And Holland testified that he saw also a large puff of smoke coming from behind the picket fence. Then, immediately after the motorcade had passed, a Dallas police officer, Joe Smith, followed the crowd that was moving up the knoll area. They didn't go to the book depository. The people who were the eyewitnesses generally felt that the bullets were coming from directly in front of the president up in the knoll area. Now, Joe Smith, the officer, went behind the picket fence, and he was in the process of making an arrest on what he thought was a suspicious person who then pulled out ID and claimed that he was a Secret Service agent. Now it turned out there were no secret service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza. They were all in the motorcade. So, Officer Smith let that gentleman go. The final witness is Ed Hoffman. This gentleman was standing up on the freeway well in back of that first overpass, it's called the Triple Overpass, and he pulled his car over on the freeway and had a bird's eye view behind the grassy knoll area, and Ed Hoffman actually witnessed the shooting from behind the picket fence. He saw a rifle. He saw a man disassemble the rifle. He saw a man in a suit, who then walked away casually, and he actually witnessed the man who was nearly arrested by Officer Smith. Officer Smith may have come close to arresting one of the assassins in the JFK death. Now, the reason I'm spending some time on this is to underscore the importance of eyewitness testimony. Often our physical evidence, in this case, fails us. And that is the case with the endless attempts to try to identify how many shots were fired, looking at the Zapruder film, discussing the ballistics. When all of that fails, we have to rely on eyewitness evidence. Sometimes the eyewitnesses disagree, but in other instances, we can get a consensus of eyewitness testimony. And that is certainly the case in those eyewitnesses who are in Dealey Plaza and can help to identify both the number of shots fired and the all-important question of the direction of the shots
Jim du Bois 08:17
Well, given the testimony of these witnesses in Dealey Plaza, did the law enforcement authorities and, ultimately, the Warren Commission disregard what they reported? Or did they find holes in their stories?
James Norwood 08:31
Well, this really gets us into the whole topic of the Warren Commission, how it came about, what it accomplished, and above all, the process that it used as an investigation. And as it turns out, the incoming President Lyndon Johnson did not want to set up a commission of this order. He was hoping that the FBI could handle the case exclusively. When there was criticism about that approach, LBJ then decided, reluctantly, to form this panel. It was supposed to be a blue-ribbon panel of unimpeachable men who we're going to investigate the case impartially. And so, a week after the assassination, the Warren Commission was formed, and then they convened in early December. This chronology is important because, as it turned out, in that time of several weeks that had elapsed after the assassination, there was no conventional investigation. It was unlike virtually any other crime scene that one can imagine. All of that time that elapsed was crucial in missing important leads. That delayed the process of finding out really what happened. That first-day evidence, much of that, obviously, and tragically was lost. Then in the commission itself, certainly one of the key members of the commission, and actually, the first name that came to the mind of Lyndon Johnson was that of Allen Dulles. Now, Allen Dulles was the former head of the CIA, who was fired by President Kennedy after the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion when he first acceded to the presidency. Dulles was fired and in disgrace. After that event, JFK vowed that he was going to reevaluate the status of the CIA. And so, to put Allen Dulles on the commission was a curious choice. At the very first meeting of the Warren Commission, Dulles informed the other commissioners that the outcome of their investigation would undoubtedly show that the assassination was committed by a lone gunman because that's the way all of the other assassinations of American presidents were committed. Of course, he didn't note that in the Lincoln assassination, eight people were convicted of being involved in a plot to kill President Lincoln, four of whom were eventually tried and executed for the death of Lincoln. But from the outset, it was clear that the Warren Commission was starting on the premise that Lee Harvey Oswald was guilty. He sat in his perch on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, fired off three shots. One of the shots missed the president and the limousine as a whole, actually wounding a bystander, James Tag, and the other two bullets did the damage to both Governor Connolly and President Kennedy. Now, the Warren Commission did its work. It called its witnesses. And as you were asking, a number of the witnesses who presented views that opposed the position of three shots, one lone gunman firing from the back, those witnesses were often discounted. But you still can read in Warren Commission testimony of people like Jean Hill, who are claiming that she heard four to six shots. But many witnesses were simply not called by the Warren Commission when their views opposed the foregone conclusions of the Commission. It was especially in the investigation of Oswald that the Warren Commission attempted to devise a profile. And so, if one reads the Warren report, it's a pseudo biography of Oswald, trying to very, in a very difficult manner, come to some sort of motivation about why he would kill the president.
Jim du Bois 13:06
Let's focus for a moment on Lee Harvey Oswald. He was a suspect almost from the beginning. Who was Lee Harvey Oswald, and why was he so early on looked upon as the sole suspect in the Kennedy assassination?
James Norwood 13:20
Well, the reports about Oswald identifying him for a subject, as the suspect, begin within an hour of the assassination. And that is very curious because there appears on a list that was typed by one of the Dallas police detectives a list of the employees of the Texas School Book Depository, and at the head of the list was the name Harvey Lee Oswald, not Lee Harvey Oswald but Harvey Lee Oswald. How that name came to be reversed is a subject of great interest because it comes out in the 1970s, during the House Select Committee review, that Harvey Lee Oswald was in the files of American intelligence, and so many of the files referred to Lee Harvey Oswald, and other others refer to Harvey Lee Oswald. Jack Rebel, who typed up that list, had met with an army intelligence officer who just happened to be in Dealey Plaza, which was the eventual source for that Harvey Lee Oswald. We then see in some of the earliest press releases references to Harvey Lee Oswald. And so early on, Oswald was the first suspect. He was the only suspect, and there were never any other alternative suspects in this case, despite overwhelming evidence that Oswald did not act alone even if he did involve. The evidence suggests that he never purchased the rifle that he was alleged to use. His images splashed on the cover of Life magazine weeks after the assassination holding the rifle. When he was interrogated, Oswald told the police that that picture was a fabrication. It was his head pasted on someone, on someone else's body. He did not own a rifle. He did not bring a rifle to work. And he actually told the media as he was being paraded in front of the cameras before the Dallas police officers, "I didn't shoot anyone. I'm just a patsy."
Jim du Bois 15:48
Now during the weekend that began on Friday, November 22, when the President was assassinated, there are some other extraordinary events. Probably the most extraordinary was the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald as he was about to be transported out of, I believe, the Dallas Police Headquarters. He was shot by Jack Ruby. Who is Jack Ruby, and why did Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald intersect so fatefully?
James Norwood 16:13
Yes. First, it must be mentioned that there was another murder committed on the day of the assassination, and that was the death of Officer JD Tippit. Tippit was killed also under very murky circumstances. And after he was killed, almost immediately, it was argued that Oswald was the killer of Tippet as well as JFK. Now that murder didn't get investigated either. So, when one studies the Tippit killing, it is also a kind of Rashomon of evidence where one can see conflicting stories, different eyewitness accounts, very confusing forensic evidence, and the actual placement of Oswald in the location at 10th and Patten in the Oak Cliff area of Dallas, when the all of the evidence points to him already been seated in the Dallas theater at that time, the Texas theater on Jefferson Boulevard, suggest that Oswald did not kill Tippet either. Now, the shooting of Oswald occurred on Sunday, it was Sunday morning, following the assassination over the weekend. And it is arguably the first live killing ever shown on American television, where to the horror of the viewers who were following the events the assassination weekend, Oswald was being transferred from the city headquarters of the Dallas Police to the county facility actually right in Dealey Plaza, where it was believed he would be more secure, ironically. So, the transfer took place on Sunday morning. And as Oswald was being protected, at least in the security of approximately 70 Dallas police officers, a nightclub owner by the name of Jack Ruby entered, somehow got into the basement, stepped forward, and shot Oswald in the stomach. Oswald was then transferred to Parkland Hospital, the same hospital where JFK was taken and pronounced dead. And it was there that Lee Harvey Oswald was pronounced dead as well from the shot from Jack Ruby. Ruby is a shadowy figure whose background, if we trace it very carefully, shows ties to the American government. He was a known FBI informant going all the way back to the time of Richard Nixon and the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s. He was a gun runner in the employ, obviously, of the CIA, and running guns to Cuba. And so there are many unanswered questions about Jack Ruby.
Jim du Bois 19:26
After the Warren Commission report came out, there were subsequent reports that came in later years, for example, the Clark Panel, Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and the House Select Committee On Assassinations. What did these subsequent investigatory bodies reveal or perhaps even contradict from the Warren report?
James Norwood 19:46
This is an important topic, and to study those stages of the assassination, inquiry, and the aftermath is extremely instructive because each one of those investigatory bodies eventually uncovers new and important information about the assassination. So, it's worth our while to have that timeline, the chronology, of all the new things that we learn decade by decade in the various investigations. A turning point really is one that's not a government investigation but a personal and private investigation by Jim Garrison, the district attorney in New Orleans, because he really sparked a new interest in the case in the late 1960s, when he formally charged, arrested and charged one man that he thought was complicit in the assassination of JFK. The Garrison trial then unfolded, and Clay Shaw, who was put on trial, was acquitted by the jury, who, after the case was over, said that Garrison had made a very strong case that there was a plot to kill the president, they just couldn't find conclusively that there was evidence against Clay Shaw. The key issue on which Garrison's case revolved was that Clay Shaw was associated with the CIA. He denied that on the witness stand. Garrison was able to, unable to provide definitive proof. But years later, due especially to the House Select Committee in the 1970s, the truth came out that Clay Shaw was, in fact, associated with the CIA. So, the Garrison trial was significant as a turning point. It then led, especially in the wake of Watergate, to more accountability from government, that led to the Rockefeller Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations. And then in the 1990s, the ARRB, the Assassination Records Review Board that came about due to the effect of Oliver Stone's JFK film, and then unsealed files, released new documents for the public and conducted key interviews that were especially revealing to shed new light on the case. So, we now have so much information that it's possible to pull it together and understand what happened in the death of President Kennedy.
Jim du Bois 22:38
Why do you think people of all ages, of all generations, remain so fascinated with the Kennedy assassination?
James Norwood 22:45
Well, one reason certainly is that we do not have closure yet on this subject. And no matter what the degree of expertise or knowledge, people get involved in this a little and realize that there is just so much confusion and contradictory evidence that it's an incomplete episode in our nation's history. Another important fact is that of the significance of the event itself, what a turning point it was in our nation's history. Keep in mind that on the Monday following the assassination, a major policy of our nation had changed. And that was our commitment to the war in Vietnam. JFK was ready to withdraw the advisors. He had formulated a plan to bring back 1000 advisors by the end of ‘64 and to completely end any involvement of America, in Vietnam, by 1965. All of that changed with the incoming president, Lyndon Johnson, and it happened almost instantly over the assassination weekend. And so, Dan Rather, the CBS commentator, said famously that on Tuesday, Americans went back to work, and we went back on our course as Americans. Well, the course of America did change on that date because the Pentagon had already concluded that the draft was going to be increased and that we had to anticipate approximately 50,000 casualties of American military in the commitment to Viet Nam. So our history radically changed with that event. It was a turning point. And in studying the assassination, it sheds light on the entire evolution of our nation. It's also important, I think, to study this topic because of the actual legacy of President Kennedy. This was a man who is interested in looking at diplomacy as a main way to solve the world's problems as opposed to necessarily military engagement. He had developed plans for detente with Khrushchev in the Soviet Union, with Castro in Cuba, kinds of approaches that anticipated what would not come until the 1980s with Mikhail Gorbachev and his policy of Glasnost. And even in Africa, even today, John F. Kennedy is celebrated as a great liberator, someone who championed the nationalism of African nations and actually championed Arab nationalism in the Arab states, especially Egypt. So, it's worth our while to understand the man and his legacy that really marks a watershed in our history in the last half-century.
Jim du Bois 25:48
Professor James Norwood, thank you so much for joining us.
James Norwood 25:51
Thank you, Jim. It was a pleasure.