Editor’s note: This piece by former UPI newsman Norman Runnion first appeared in the Herald of Randolph on Nov. 14, 2013.
It was 50 years ago today, on Nov, 22, 1963, that President John F. Kennedy was shot to death in Dallas by an obscure oddball named Lee Harvey Oswald. For those of us who were around on that searing day in American history, it could have been yesterday, not 50 years ago
At the time, I was the night news editor in the Washington bureau of United Press International when those two famous news flashes came across the news wire: “Shots fired at Kennedy Motorcade,” followed by “FLASH–President Kennedy shot and perhaps fatally wounded.”
The story was filed by UPI’s Merriman Smith, a longtime chief White House correspondent, and a hunter who instantly recognized the sound of three gunshots that had been fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Our offices were on the 7th floor of the Press building overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and the parade route. I can hear today the haunting sounds of the muffled drums as they passed below our windows, leading the solemn procession past the thousands of people who jammed the sidewalks to watch and mourn.
Smith was in a press pool car just behind the Kennedy limousine. He reached down for a mobile phone, asked the White House telephone operator to call the UPI bureau in Dallas and started dictating. Smitty was in the front seat, Jack Bell of the Associated Press was sitting behind him.
Bell knew he was being beaten on the story and that Smith had the car’s only mobile phone. He tried to grab it but Smith held on tight, whereupon a desperate Bell started to pound on Smith’s head until they reached Parkland Hospital where Kennedy was pronounced dead.
Smith flew back to Washington on Air Force One along with a stunned Jacqueline Kennedy, wearing her vividly bloodstained pink outfit, and an equally stunned Vice President Lyndon Johnson, who was sworn in as President of the United States by a Dallas Justice of the Peace.
When Smith resurfaced in our Washington bureau that night he sat down and began writing the story that would win him the Pulitzer Prize. He was constantly interrupted by telephone calls and he would say things like, “Yeah, they shot his goddamn brains out. …” He could not stop talking. Months later he said he would wake up at night screaming. Always hearing three gunshots.
Sad procession
The following Sunday after the shooting, when Kennedy’s body was transported from the White House to lie in state at the Capitol, I was driving from my house in Virginia to the UPI office in the National Press Building when I came across an unexpected traffic jam at the Memorial Bridge leading to downtown.
It was the caisson and the “riderless horse that was to carry the president’s body to the Capitol where it would lie in state.
Our offices were on the 7th floor of the Press building overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue and the parade route. I can hear today the haunting sounds of the muffled drums as they passed below our windows, leading the solemn procession past the thousands of people who jammed the sidewalks to watch and mourn.
Meanwhile, in busy offices across the city and around the world, professional investigators in the FBI and CIA, among others, were trying to answer the essential question, “Who in hell is Lee Harvey Oswald?”
More News on the Wire
From my desk I was monitoring the UPI wire when suddenly there was an explosion of activity and a story appeared saying that Oswald had recently defected to the Soviet Union but had since returned home.
In our office the instant reaction was: where did that story come from? I’m sure the same question was being asked throughout the city.
The source of the story was Bud Korengold, a college classmate of mine who had been the UPI’s deputy bureau chief in Moscow but was now on a Nieman Journalism Fellowship at Harvard. He instantly recognized Oswald’s name as the “defector” who had suddenly shown up in Moscow and called a news conference to announce his presence.
UPI carried the story but it didn’t have much impact. The Soviets were so suspicious of Oswald that they briefly jailed him before sending him back to America.
Korengold, still ensconced at Harvard, knew that with the Oswald-in-Russia story he was sitting on dynamite. Even though he had moved to Newsweek, he remained loyal to UPI. He called the Boston bureau and told a reporter that he knew Oswald was a former defector to the Soviet Union. It was a worldwide scoop.
The guy in the Boston bureau said impatiently, “Look, fellow, the president has just been assassinated. We’re busy. Call back tomorrow.”
Growing rapidly frustrated, Korengold put in a call to the UPI’s New York office and asked for Roger Tatarian, director of news operations and a brilliant editor.
“Roger,” he said. “This is Bud. I know who Lee Harvey Oswald is.”
Tatarian put a sheet of paper in his typewriter and said, “Start dictating.” Within minutes, Americans learned the details of Kennedy’s killer.
What Was the ‘Why’?
At this point. the world knew the Who (Oswald), the What (The assassination), but not the Why. Why did Oswald commit one of the great crimes of history?
To try to answer the urgently pressing questions, the new Lyndon Johnson administration created the Warren Commission, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, distinguished Senators and Congressmen, and a large contingent of professional investigators.
Months later, their findings, contained in a massive paper Bluebook put together by the Government Printing Office in the District of Columbia, were made public.
I was assigned to write the main story about the Commission report and I’ll never forget the sight of a messenger coming to our seventh floor office and dumping boxes of the blue paper-bound books on the nearest available table.
The report was embargoed for a later release to give journalists time to absorb the contents instead of rushing out with the first available tidbits.
But the stark principal finding was right there: Oswald, acting alone, had murdered America’s beloved president.
Doubters Jump In
It didn’t take long for the doubters to jump in with conspiracy theories. You say one lone nutcase thought this all up and carried out this enormous crime all by himself? You’ve got to be kidding.
Surely you realize this was the work of the Mafia in retaliation for Kennedy’s sexual affair with the girlfriend of a Mafia gangster? Surely you know that Fidel Castro was behind this all because of American resistance to his government?
Surely you’re aware that Oswald could not have gotten off three accurate shots just like that?
Surely you saw that shadowy figure of another man firing from the Grassy Knoll along the parade route? Surely you saw Kennedy’s head snap back, meaning he was shot from the front and not the back as the Warren Commission said.
Surely you know Jack Ruby killed Oswald to prevent him from telling the truth instead of reacting on the spur of the moment to the murder of “His president?”
Hell Hole of Our Culture
To dig into these theories, many of which have been egotistically posted on YouTube and Facebook, is to enter into a very dark and perverted hell hole of American culture. By the way, didn’t you know that either Jacqueline Kennedy or George H. W. Bush were the real plotters?
The sad fact is that Americans have become prone to accept the accusations and ignore the rebuttals. We “know” there is no such thing as “truth.” We ”know” our lives are controlled and manipulated by the “Bigs” — Big Government, Big Business, Big Corporations, Big Media, all determined to promote their own priorities over the public good.
One theory that has made sense for me over the years came in a book by a Warren Commission investigator. It involved Oswald’s exotic Russian-born wife, Marina, who came to Washington to testify to the Warren Commission. She wound up sleeping, apparently, with any man that asked.
According to this theory she would make fun of her husband’s sexual prowess. He wanted to prove his manhood to her, and what better way to demonstrate his right to fame than by killing the president?
Or maybe, on the 100th anniversary in 2063, a “treasure trove” of previously secret documents will be found in the attic of an abandoned barn in East Texas.
They will show conclusively that President John F, Kennedy was murdered on the explicit orders of aliens from outer space.
ET, where are you?
CORRECTION: This story originally incorrectly stated that Merriman Smith committed suicide a few months after Kennedy was assassinated. Smitty, who was despondent over the death of his son in Vietnam, shot himself in 1970.
