6
Tuesday, November 22, 1988 / University Daily Kansan
The Kennedy Assassination
November 22,1963 in review Journalists remember the events of Kennedy's assassination
The Associated Press
NEW YORK — Young CBS correspondent Dan Rather was standing just over a ridge from Dallas' Deane Plaza, holding a yellow sack, waiting for a bus. He cameraman in President Kennedy's motorcade
"I saw what I thought was the president's and it seemed to make a wrong turn. Rather it turned for the better."
"I knew something was wrong. You know when you know something, but you don't know why you know it? I went back over that ridge and saw an incredible scene. Some people were on the ground, some people were trying to cover children. It was a scene of great confusion."
Rather looked for a telephone but couldn't immediately find one to sprint to KRLD, the airport.
CBS anchor Walter Cronkite was in New York, working in the newsroom.
"I happened to be standing at the printer when the UP bulletin came across that shots had rung out in Dealey Plaza," he said. "As soon as we got that first report, we ordered up lines and got into the announcement booth . . . and started interrupting with voiceover bullets on the ongoing program. And then we got the camera up there I think in about 10 minutes."
While Crankite read wire reports on the air, Rather was at KRLD trying to confirm rumors that Kennedy was dead. The Parkland Memorial Hospital switchboard told him Kennedy was dead. KRLD's Eddie Barker had the head of the hospital saying he was dead. Rather finally got a surgeon and a priest who were in the emergency room to
confirm that Kennedy was dead. Rather told New York. Crankle went with it on the air.
“There wasn't any doubt in my mind,” said Rather, who had beaten the opposition on the biggest story of their lives. “The official announcement was that they another 17 minutes. It was a very long 17 minutes.”
After those 17 minutes, Crankite was handed a piece of wire copy. "From Dallas, Texas, the flash, apparently official," he said solemnly, removing his glasses. "President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Two o'clock Eastern Standard Time." Crankite choked up for a moment, on camera.
"It was when you finally had to say the word, initially, that he was dead that it really impacted in the way I think," she said.
Cronkite walked off the air after six hours and just wanted to call his wife, Betsy. The phone lines had been tied up all afternoon. A line came free for a second, and he grabbed it, only to hear a woman ask to speak to "someone in charge of the news department."
"She said, 'I'd like to complain about having that Walter Cronkite on the air at this time crying his crocodile tears when everyone knows he hated John Kennedy.' I said, 'Madam, what is your name?' She gave me her name and address on Park Avenue. I said, 'You are speaking to Walter Cronkite, and you, madam, are a damn idiot.' He hung up.
On Sunday, the networks were covering the movement of accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas City Jail to the county jail. Only NBC was on live when Jack Rubie stepped out of
the crowd and shot Oswald at point-blank range.
Tom Pettit was the correspondent on the scene.
"I clearly saw the shooting which was about a feet from where I was," he said. "I had a clear visual field to see somebody fire a revolver into Oswald's lower abdomen. I did not see Jack Ruby come through the crowd. I did not see anybody; I just saw the gunshot.
"What I was seeing was coming out of my mouth. It was the only time I've really experienced doing eyewitness reporting while you're live on the air."
Pettit said he has never seen his own coverage of the Oswald assassination and doesn't want to.
"You know, it's a kind of a historic event in broadcasting, the first televised murder, but for me it was so horrendous a situation to be in and so emotional and so charged with fear, concern and a sense of pending doom that I would not like to relive it.
"I remember hearing our coverage when they had the casket at the rotunda of the Capitol. No narration, just symphonic music. Television really distinguished itself in that time, I think, really devoted itself to the notion that it was holding the country together. Whether it was in truth or not, who am I to say? But at the time, we certainly felt that responsibility."
"It was a major moment of course in our history and in our television history," Cronkite said. "I think we responded as an industry well. We showed our capabilities technologically and substantively as well — what we covered, how we covered it, the decorum with which we approached the story."
Conspiracy authors dispute findings of Warren Report in JFK's murder
The Associated Press
The body of John F. Kennedy has been in its tomb 25 years. The identity of his slayer has still not been put to rest.
Conjuring up "Who Killed Kennedy?" theories has been a cult industry. Several hundred books have been written about the assassination. Conspiracy authors have been the darlings, along with UFO eyewitnesses, of late-night talk shows and supermarket tabloids. Scenarios have involved the CIA, KGB, Fidel Castro, Texas oilmen, Lyndon Johnson, midgget marksmens, Jack Ruby, the Maria or phalanxes of ghostly gunmen as the real killers.
The public seems capable of accepting that Squeaky Fromme and John Hinckley were driven by their own private demons when they shot at presidents. Peculiarly, the public has had difficulty accepting the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald, an ideological supporter of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Conspiracy finds a believing audience.
Yet there is also something peculiar about conspiracy theorists. They dismiss the Warren Commission's finding. But, by and large, they base their own theories on the very same 26-volume Warren Report and its thousands of witness transcripts and affidavits and FBI reports. Conspiracy theorists footnote the
report scrupiually. They have not been as thorough in footnoting ALL the pertinent data
An illustration of the technique
Mark Lane may be the best-known critic of the commission. In his book "Rush to Judgment," Lane at one point tries to undermine the testimony of Harold Norman. Norman was an order filler at the Texas School Book Depository, as was Oswald. The commission concluded that Oswald fired three shots at the president's motorcade from the sixth floor of the Depository. Norman was one floor down watching the motorcade with two co-workers.
Lane: "Although the three men withdrew from their position at the windows into the quiet of the deserted fifth floor, they were unable to detect any sound of movement above. Yet Norman claimed that while he was still at the window he was able to hear the action of a riffle bolt and the sound of empty shells hitting the floor above."
Mark Lane did not include this further testimony to the commission of Bonnie Ray Williams, one of the men at the window with Norman.
Williams: "Probably the reason we didn't hear anything is because, you know, after the shots we were running, too, and that was making a louder noise."
Grassy knoll
A favorite sniper's nest among conspiracy theorists is the "grassy knoll" area. The motorcade was approaching it when Kennedy was shot. If there were another rifleman there as well as Oswald to the rear in the Depository, the plot must thicken.
Lane several times cites the testimony of S.M. Holland who was standing near the grassy knoll: "... (Holland) saw a puff of smoke come from the trees." Lane does not quote Holland's further testimony: "... and I heard three more shots after the first shot, but that was the only puff of smoke I saw."
"Clemon E. Johnson told FBI agents that he had observed 'white smoke' around the knoll. Lane does not tell his readers, but Clemon E. Johnson also told the FBI he "felt this smoke came from a motorcycle abandoned near the spot by a Dallas policeman."
Lane quotes liberally from at least 34 witnesses who thought they heard gunfire from the knoll area. He does not quote liberally from the more than 60 who favored the Depository. Nowhere in "Rush to Judgment" is the testimony of F. LEE Mudt: "... from the direction of the Depository. ..." or Marion Baker: "... high up, pretty sure from the Depository..."
Lane:
Archives contain files, memories of assassination
There is the 6.5mm, Mannlicher-Coernbolt bolt-action rifle that Lee Harvey Oswald was bought for $20 through a mail order house. It is still in production. The label from the Warren Commission's investigation a quarter-century ago.
WASHINGTON — Stacked on institutional green metal shelves in a dreary, off-limits nook of the National Archives is virtually every shred of evidence of the crime of the century, assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Behind a vault door are hundreds of gray cardboard boxes filled with materials used in two government investigations, from tedium bureaucratic documents to chilling reminiscent stories. In Dallas in 25 years ago today.
The Associated Press
There are the three shell casings that Oswald left at his six-floor perch in the Texas School Book history overlooking Dealey Plaza.
There's the bullet, an incredibly unblemished copper clug, which the Warren Commission said killed the president and wounded then-Gov. John Connally of Texas as they rode in the motorcade. Conspiracy theory officials identified the bullet, found on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital, could not have pierced both Kennedy and Connally and remained virtually intact.
A piece of Dallas
There's a piece of Dallas in the collection, a one-foot chunk of concrete street curb removed from Dealey Plaza because of an early suspicion that it contained bullet fragments. The curb was found to contain items of lead but not the copper of the kind of bullets used by Oswald.
Scattered among reams of FBI and Secret Service reports are fragments of the lonely life of Oswald, a Marxist who lived in obscurity and died in Harper's Warren Commission concluded while alive when he killed Kennedy.
There are his academic records from the first grade, FBI interviews with junior high school classmates, and his student assistant, and his smudged, handwritten diary.
The Warren Commission, appointed by President Johnson shortly after the assassination, transferred its estimated 360 cubic feet of records to the National Archives in late 1964.
More than 95 percent of those records, along with physical evidence presented to the FBI and other government investigators, is available to researchers.
The House Select Committee on assassinations also has its records, another 300 cubic feet of materials, housed in the same room. Most of the House panel's records have been sealed for 50 years, and a small band of Kennedy researchers have failed in their tireless efforts to persuade Congress to open them for public scrutiny.
In the 1960s and early 1970s, the National Archives was seen as a gold mine of clues for authors and self-styled sleuths who were convinced they could unravel the mysteries of the Kennedy assassination and prove that Oswald was part of a conspiracy.
Conspiracy theory
Interest in the materials was renewed in 1978 when the House committee concluded that Kennedy probably was killed as the result of a conspiracy. The panel's finding that there was more than one gunman has much controversy as the Warren Commission's lone gunman conclusion.
There is little activity involving the records these days, according to Marion Johnson, a government archivist for 40 years and chief overseer of the Kennedy Records. He said no authors or scholars are conducting regular research on the assassination at the National Archives.
Some of the Kennedy assassination materials are off-limits.
The slain president's clothing, including his monogrammed pin-stripe shirt soaked with blood, are preserved by a mission from the Kennedy family.
The same is true of the 52 black-and-white and color photos of the autopsy. A set of the graphic photos, made clandestinely at the time of the autopsy by a Secret Service agent who was one of the few people who had access to them, have appeared recently in a reprint of a conspiracy theory book and on a segment of public television's "Nova" series that was devoted to the assassination.
Also available at the archives is the Zapruder film, a grainy home movie taken by a Dallas dress manufacturer Abraham Zapruder that has provided the best, though far from perfect, video evidence of the slaying.
But the film can be reproduced only with the permission of the Zapruder family. Zapruder's son, a Washington lawyer, is selling rights to the film clip to TV producers for up to $30,000. He was sued last month by researchers who claim the historic film is part of the public domain.
CONGRATULATIONS — KELLY MOORE
You and Orel Hershiser are going to Disneyland because you've passed the California Real Estate Exam. Now pass those classes, graduate and bring that winning Jayhawk spirit to sunny, Southern California. There are many $$$$ waiting for you!
Leon and Maggi
IBM Compatibility Introducing the new 10Mhz system.
△HYUNDAI
Introducing the Super 16TE PC-compatil
Here is a new level of IBM compatibility,
speed (10Mhz) and flexibility (5 expansion slots).
Each Hyundai includes 640K memory, a "101"
keyboard, full software (wp, spreadsheet,
database), orientation, support and an 18 month
warranty. Best of all-it's backed by the $20 billion
Hyundai Corporation Retail KU Price
16TE $1045 $720
Super 16TE $1045
Sample Systems:
■ 2 drive, amber monitor $1075
■ 2 drive, color monitor $1275
■ 30Mb, amber monitor $1470
■ 30Mb, color monitor $1675
COMPUTER SUPPLY SOURCE
2512 W 6th St.842-6379
PRIVACY
Semi-private baths. Quiet study areas. Weekly maid service. Individually controlled air conditioning. Living on your own without being far from campus. Our new "DINE ANYTIME" meal program that allows you to eat when you want so that meal time is no longer a stampede.
We have more
We have more. You can too.
Now leasing for the SPRING '89 Semester. For information and a tour come by or call 913-843-8559 today.