He is, however, identified as a former special assisstant to President Kennedy, and therein lies an obvious conflict, which the author seeks to defuse: "I make no great claim to impartiality. I served in JFK's White House, and it was the most exhilarating experience of my life ... I may not be totally useless as a witness."
Generally, he is not. Schlesinger cites a variety of polls showing that JFK remains an immensely popular figure, all these years after his death --- less so among historians, but popular still. Nevertheless, Schlesinger seeks to dispose of the fanciful notion that Kennedy-era Washington was Camelot. "No one when JFK was alive ever spoke of Washington as Camelot --- and if anyone had done so, no one would have been more derisive than JFK. Nor did those of us around him see ourselves for a moment, heaven help us, as knights of the Round Table."
More substantively, Schlesinger takes on a number of what he calls "myths" about the Kennedy presidency, starting with the 1960 campaign. Citing the allegation that the Kennedys stole the election in Illinois, he writes that "Illinois was not crucial to Kennedy's victory. Had he lost Illinois, Kennedy still would have won by 276 to 246 in the electoral collage." Furthermore, Schlesinger writes, if there was any vote theft by Democrats in Cook County, Republicans were equally guilty of stealing votes elsewhere in the state.
In the balance of "The Truth As I See It," Schlesinger:
Schlesinger's article is replete with citations and opinions that second his own. This is not necessarily a good thing; his faith in the sworn testimony of Richard Helms, for example, that Operation Mongoose was "not intended to apply to assassination activity" is mystifying.
Kennedy certainly made mistakes, including the reappointment of J. Edgar Hoover and Allen Dulles. But Schlesinger believes that JFK's achievements were many, though not always quantifiable --- as in his challenge to a new generation to ask not what their country could do for them, but what they could do for their country. The country had seen nothing like it since the New Deal. Kennedy was, Schlesinger concludes, "the best of my generation."
Not to be outdone in its JFK coverage, Texas Monthly, a slick corporate magazine from the Lone Star State, also devoted many pages of its November 1998 issue to the subject of the assassination.
Under the umbrella title "The Assassination at 35" --- like it's a movie star or something --- Texas Monthly covered such topics as "The Conspiracy Theories" and "The Evidence." While posing as objective, it tipped its hand in "The Lone Gunman," an article that said, "Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy. End of story." Yawn. But what did I expect?
One very strange comment came in an article called "The Two Oswalds." Written in a slightly incredulous style, the article describes a meeting with researcher John Armstrong, foremost among those advancing the theory that "Lee Harvey Oswald" was essentially a creation of U.S. Intelligence, and that two people used that identity. The article stated that Armstrong "hardly fits the profile of a conspiracy nut."
What?! Because he isn't a wild-eyed, rapid-talking paranoid, like the Mel Gibson character in Conspiracy Theory? Because his claims are documented? Because, like a scientist, he will alter his hypothesis as more credible evidence comes along? Sheesh.
Almost lost in Texas Monthly's coverage is a small article buried on the magazine's last page. "Texas Primer," apparently a regular feature of the magazine, has a small profile of Abraham Zapruder, who made the famous home movie of the assassination. The item is of interest primarily (to me) because of the still photograph accompanying it, showing Zapruder being interviewed in a TV studio an hour or two after the assassiantion. Why this item was segregated from the main body of the JFK material is a mystery.
The Governor has always insisted that he was not hit by the same bullet that went through the President's back. At the same time, Connally has stated that he is satisfied with the conclusions of the Warren Commission. This is insanity. --- Penn Jones, 1969
The last surviving passenger of JFK's death car rediscovers a long-lost record of the murder.
By Michael R. Beschloss
"I will fight anybody that argues with me about those three shots," says the last survivor of the Lincoln Continental that rolled through Dealey Plaza in Dallas 35 years ago this week. "I do know what happened in that car," says Nellie Connally. "Fight me if you want to."
Sitting in her high-rise apartment overlooking the Houston skyline, Mrs. Connally, the widow of the Texas governor who was shot along with John F. Kennedy, is discussing the motorcade, thumbing through a diary she scribbled out on yellow legal pages a few weeks after the assassination. Mrs. Connally had put the diary away in December 1963 and rediscovered it only after her husband's 1993 death. The heretofore- unpublished diary reaffirms the Connallys' verdict about the shooting: that the Warren Commission was wrong in concluding that a single bullet passed through JFK's neck and Connally's chest. Neither Governor Connally nor his widow shared the more elaborate conspiracy theories of the case; like her husband, Mrs. Connally says that the only assassin was Lee Harvey Oswald--"a scrambled egg brain with 15 bucks" for a high- powered rifle. But the Connally family position is different from the Warren Commission's: though they agree there was no conspiracy, they also insist there was no "magic bullet." On the 35th anniversary of the murder, it is striking that doubts about the full truth of the assassination linger in even the last survivor, and her diary is a revealing, emotional account of one of the century's most important turning points.
The Connallys have maintained that two bullets struck JFK and another hit the governor. This view does not account for the Warren Commission's finding that one bullet missed the car entirely. Some conspiracy theorists argue that if three bullets hit their targets, and an additional bullet missed, then there must have been a second gunman: nobody could have fired so many rounds so quickly.
In her contemporaneous diary, she writes that after hearing a first shot, Connally turned to his right "to look back" at Kennedy "and then wheeled to the left to get another look at the President. He could not, so he realized the President had been shot. John said, 'No, no, no!' " Then Connally "was hit himself by the second shot and said, 'My God, they are going to kill us all!' " The governor "wheeled back to the right, crumpling his shoulders to his knees in the most helpless and pitiful position a tall man could be in."
Then, according to Mrs. Connally's diary, came a fatal third shot that passed through the president's head. She writes, "With John in my arms and still trying to stay down ... I felt something falling all over me. My sensation was buckshot ... My eyes saw bloody matter in tiny bits all over the car ... Mrs. Kennedy was saying, 'Jack, Jack! They have killed my husband! I have his brains in my hand'."
It is ironic that Kennedy and Connally should be inextricably linked in history. Though Connally served as JFK's Navy secretary, the Texan had spread (correct) allegations about Kennedy's secret Addison's disease while campaigning for Lyndon Johnson at the 1960 Democratic National Convention. In 1963 Connally worried that the liberal New Frontier might hurt his gubernatorial re-election campaign. Jacqueline Kennedy disliked the Texas governor, whom she privately considered self-satisfied and too handsome for his own good.
In her diary and an interview for NEWSWEEK, Mrs. Connally offered other sidelights on the assassination. When JFK, whose liberalism was playing badly in Lone Star country, first proposed four fund-raising events in the state, the president got a warning from the governor: angry Texans, Connally said, would complain Kennedy was trying to "financially rape the state." Connally told Nellie that when he insisted Kennedy bring Jackie on the trip, the president did not enjoy being told that his wife's presence would be essential to win votes in Texas. In the end, however, the governor felt that JFK would "rope and tie" her to come. The trip was set for Nov. 21 and 22, 1963, so that the Kennedys could be back in Washington for John Jr.'s third-birthday party--the day that turned out to be the day of President Kennedy's funeral.
The shots echoed long after that bloody Friday in Dallas. Mrs. Connally recalls that their old friend LBJ quizzed the governor at length about what it was like to get shot. In later years the assassination was never far from the Connallys' minds--the governor recoiled from sounds resembling gunfire; to this day, his wife blanches when she spots an automobile interior of the same navy blue as that of Kennedy's limousine.
Invited to JFK's funeral, Mrs. Connally refused to leave her husband's bedside at Parkland Hospital, where security agents had shrouded his windows with steel covers. Instead she sent their 17-year-old son John III with a letter to give to Mrs. Kennedy. In Dallas a week later, a courier handed the governor's wife a handwritten note from Jacqueline on pale blue White House stationery. In the letter, never published before now, the widow implores Nellie to never forget JFK: "Do you know, the only thing I can think of, if Jack had to die that way, in a car in a motorcade, I'm glad he did it in the company of a man like John Connally ... And the other thing I'm glad about is that on that awful ride to the hospital we were two women who really loved their husbands, with those two brave men." It was a tragic ride into history.
Time after time the questions have been asked: "What about Governor Connally? Why did they shoot him? Did he know about the conspiracy?" In the past we have answered by saying we were undecided...
Now we answer differently. Now we believe Connally knew the President was going to be killed, but Connally did not know when, where or how...
Connally was experienced with a rifle, so his strange statement "My God, they are going to kill us all," had long puzzled us. That was truly rapid thinking when at this point the Secret Service men had hardly reacted at all.
Connally did not say: "My God, that man is going to kill someone." Connally did not indicate at the time of his testimony [before the Warren Commission] whether or not he knew --- from the direction of the shots or the rapidity of the shots --- why he had used the plural pronoun. The most terrible possibility is that as the guns were firing, in his moment of truth, Governor Connally was admitting he knew of the entire plot.
The Governor has always insisted that he was not hit by the same bullet that went through the President's back. At the same time, Connally has stated that he is satisfied with the conclusions of the Warren Commission. This is insanity. By persisting that he was hit by a separate shot, Connally destroys the Warren Report completely. How can he then state that he has no quarrel with the Commission's findings?
Governor Connally was an important member of the group which made the decision to hold the luncheon in The Trade Mart. The Trade Mart decision was necessary, and a downtown parade was imperative in order that a strange group in the office of attorney Eugene Locke (candidate for Governor of Texas in 1968) could make the decision for the detour by the School Book Depository Building...
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