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Unraveling the JFK Assassination Mysteries Part 1: LBJ's Contentious Choice, Oswald's Dubious Role, and the Chilling Chicago Plot with Our Special Guest Dom
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What if everything we thought we knew about JFK's assassination was just the tip of the iceberg? Unravel the hidden layers of one of the most scrutinized events in American history with our latest episode of A Better Life. We start by addressing George's leave of absence and the fantastic feedback from our debut episode. Our special guest, Dom, joins us to examine the contentious choice of LBJ as JFK's running mate, the rumored blackmail by J. Edgar Hoover, and Bobby Kennedy's fierce opposition. We also trace Lee Harvey Oswald's journey from dropout to Marine sharpshooter, delving into potential roles and connections he may have had.
Explore the chilling details captured in Mary Borman's Polaroid photo, which shows the exact moment of the fatal shot and the mysterious "Badge Man." We analyze Oswald's paraffin test results and his adamant denials, proposing he might have been a scapegoat. The eerie similarities between assassination attempts in Miami, Chicago, and the tragic event in Dallas also come under the microscope. This segment shines a spotlight on Abraham Bolden, the first African-American Secret Service agent, who was allegedly silenced after uncovering critical evidence about the Chicago plot and later pardoned by President Biden. We wrap up this chapter by noting Marina Oswald’s attempts to return to the USSR, adding another twist to this tangled narrative.
As we piece together the days leading up to JFK’s fateful Dallas visit, we discuss Johnson’s announcement, Oswald’s movements, and Kennedy's political ambitions for the Texas trip. Our analysis covers everything from the tension between Senator Yarborough, LBJ, and John Connolly to Oswald’s passport pursuits and his mysterious visit to Mexico City. We scrutinize Ruth Payne’s controversial role, Oswald’s activities in New Orleans, and the anti-Castro figures complicating the scenario further. Finally, we reflect on the final preparations for Kennedy’s trip, including Johnson’s suggestion for Jacqueline Kennedy to ride with him, and the finalization of the motorcade route, setting the stage for the tragic events that followed. Don’t miss this intricate exploration of one of history’s most significant and contentious moments.
Hello everyone and welcome back to A Better Life. I guess I abbreviated everything to GS. This is Steve.
Speaker 1:Like I said many times, george has been on the leave of absence for a better term, working on a project and we can't wait to hear about it when it's up and running, which is not too far away from my understanding. So we got a great reception on our first podcast and we've gotten a lot of people come to us and say we want to know more about the assassination things, and Dom is back today to talk to us again a little bit about we're going to get a deep dive into JFK and it may be so deep that it covers two episodes. So we're going to go through the assassination pretty methodically, hopefully, and we're going to talk about some of the things we've learned in the more recent times with the new documents, even though they're not all out as of yet. But there has been some new revelations and one of them is that if Donald Trump wins the election, he plans to appoint RFK to do a commission and able to declassify any documents or anything he finds about the assassinations of his uncle and his father. Right, tom.
Speaker 2:Yes, judge, and thank you so much for having me back on right, tom.
Speaker 1:Yes, judge, and thank you so much for having me back on. Oh, it's my pleasure. I'm glad to have you here. I know that this is a very interesting topic. We talk about it at length, many different aspects of it, so we're going to try to start at the beginning, and I think the beginning starts when JFK decides that he's going to have LBJ be his running mate.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's purported that LBJ stated that one in four presidents die in office, and he's a betting man Also. One of his associates, Bobby Baker, made a prediction stating that JFK would not last his first term.
Speaker 1:Which is pretty interesting. There's also and I don't know how much truth is it maybe you know that somewhere along the line of that day, that infamous day when Kennedy himself went down to ask LBJ to be vice president without Bobby's knowledge, after the convention, not after he'd been selected as the candidate that he got a visit from some people from the FBI at Hoover's behest.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's what's written about that Kennedy's sex life was handed over to LBJ as blackmail. When Bobby found out that JFK had selected LBJ, he went berserk because he knew what type of a person he was his reputation, and he went to his brother and said yeah, we got to get rid of this guy, we can't use him. But LBJ had already had a discussion with JFK and he showed him the documents and that was that Sealed the deal.
Speaker 1:And Bobby actually, at least as portrayed certainly in the LBJ movie, with Woody House and paying LBJ that Bobby went down there and tried to talk him out of accepting the vice presidency and LBJ laughed in his face. Obviously yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't seen that film, but I could see LBJ doing that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think they make a reference to Hoover's blackmail or whatever it is that was his standard operating procedure for any elected official.
Speaker 2:He would immediately put his agents onto you and find out whatever they could Back then. If you were gay, that was a big deal. If you were in the closet, if you cheated on your wife, that was a big deal. And his agents would compile a file on you. And then what would happen is you would come in and meet Mr Hoover and he would say Judge, it's wonderful that you've been elected to this office and I just want you to know. This has come across my desk. And he would slide the file over to you. You'd look at it and he'd say Judge, I want you to know that you have a friend in the Bureau as long as I'm here, and that was his way of blackmailing everybody.
Speaker 1:Worked for me. I'm sure they have lots of files on me so I don't have to really worry. So those are two of the players, right. Lbj JFK. Obviously, lee Harvey Oswald is one of the others and it's my understanding that in 56, he drops out of high school and he joins the Marines and where he's trained as a sharpshooter, strangely enough, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Lee Harvey Oswald.
Speaker 1:Right. And then a few years later, I think in 59, he defects to the Soviet Union to work at an electronics factory there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so what happened was, it seems, that the military and the CIA got the idea of sending defectors over to the Soviet Union, and Oswald seems to be one of a batch of about 18 or 20 that were sent over there in a very short period of time. As a matter of fact, the guy who was on line in front of him worked for the CIA as well. The Soviets were on to him immediately. They're like what's going on here? All of a sudden everybody wants to defect to us.
Speaker 2:It didn't make any sense, but one of the things it seems that he was involved in because he was in Minsk actually two things over there. One we really didn't know much about Soviet society, how things worked internally over there, simple things, bus lines, how government worked at a local level. So that was one thing, and it might have been coincidence. I don't know. I typically don't believe in coincidences, but Marina, her uncle, was a KGB officer, so there might have been something going on there trying to get her out of the Soviet Union for debriefing purposes, because maybe she had something to tell US authorities Right.
Speaker 1:So Kennedy gets obviously elected president in November of 1960. Correct, we also know that Kennedy's father had gone to the mob Kano right.
Speaker 2:Yes, he was in the 30s. He was partners with Frank Costello and bootlegging, so he had a long term history with them and he knew their influence in unions and he knew their availability of cash. So he went to them and that's documented in FBI files. They followed some people that were bringing money to the Kennedy campaign, I believe in West Virginia. But yeah, he made a deal with them to help get his son elected.
Speaker 1:That comes back to haunt him right, because later on, when Kennedy gets elected, he makes his brother attorney general.
Speaker 2:Right. So we touched upon that in the first episode and it's my position that the father told John to use Bobby. Bobby was 34 years old. He had never tried a case in his life. He's definitely not somebody who's attorney general material. But I believe what Joe Kennedy wanted to do was erase for all time the connection between the Kennedy family and the mob. And what happened was Bobby went on. He was hell bent to put everybody in jail.
Speaker 2:In 1961 or 62, he literally had Carlos Marcelo, the mob boss of New Orleans, kidnapped. There was no due process, there was nothing. He was snatched off the streets of New Orleans, he was put on a plane and he found himself a few hours later in Guatemala because that seemed to be what he put on his passport, what was put on his passport when he was a child, when he came in to the country. He was Sicilian, born in Tunisia and for whatever reason, they had a Guatemalan passport or whatever. And I mean you just don't do stuff like that. If you're going to do a deal with a mob, you have to honor that deal. And they did a 180. And you don't kidnap a mob boss. You just don't do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it can't lead to anything good, right?
Speaker 2:No, and he happened to be the mob boss that controlled he was out of Louisiana but that his area also covered a place called Dallas Texas.
Speaker 1:As you can see, we're just going through some of the players and their backgrounds. Kennedy's elected RFK goes after the mob as attorney general In 62,. Oswald returns from the Soviet Union, now with a wife and a child, and he moves to Texas.
Speaker 2:And he was, even though when he defected quote unquote and he announced that he was going to give up secrets, there's no indication that anybody wanted to try him for treason. And for some strange reason, he was given a loan by the State Department. Unusual for a defector, yeah unusual.
Speaker 1:And so then in late 62, in October, he rents this infamous PO box under his real name in Dallas and maintains the rental until May of 1963, where the infamous rifle is sent to that he buys on mail order Right. So also in 1962, then he owes some of the other players it's John Connolly who was in the car and also injured, shot with what bullets? From where? That seems to be a question, but he was certainly shot In 62,. He was elected governor in November, as well as of Texas.
Speaker 2:And he was extremely tight with LBJ. They had an organization nicknamed the Suite 8F Group, nicknamed the Sweet 8F Group, which they would meet in a hotel in Texas I guess it was room Sweet 8F People like General Dynamics, Brown and Root, and they would figure out how to carve up a very large military industrial pie.
Speaker 1:Yes, that was growing in leaps and bounds after the Korean War was over, and now we're in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 2:At 62, not so much Definitely after 11, 22, 63, it skyrocketed. It was a very good business.
Speaker 1:He's elected governor 63 starts. He gets sworn in. He of course is offered and willing to assist in the planet of Kennedy's trip to Texas, and he serves as actually Kennedy's host as he comes to Texas. Correct, as governor, he was the host, yes. So another date that seems to be interesting is that on February 22nd of 63, ruth Payne another interesting player in this menagerie, so to speak, meets the Oswalt's at a party that was held at the Everett Glover House. I don't know who that is, but you may, but I don't. So some must have some significance. I'm reading it obviously. And then in March, klein Sporting Goods of Chicago receives a mail order for $21.45. And the infamous rifle is purchased, a C-2750, a World War II surplus Italian rifle.
Speaker 2:Carcano 6.5 millimeter.
Speaker 1:So, and that is used by supposedly you alias A Heidel, yeah, heidel, which is the alias used by Oswald and delivered to this infamous post office box in the rifle Oswald's serial number.
Speaker 2:Let me stop you there. The rifle is a very interesting thing. First off, with the post office box. What people talk about is that would have been an impossibility because a delivery of a package that size the post office box cannot accommodate it and the post office would not keep a package like that. They would return it right.
Speaker 2:So that's number one. Number two they do have the order form that was filled out for the rifle, but that was not the rifle that was found in the Texas School Book Depository. The length is different. There's also a major problem with the rifle that was found in the Texas School Book Depository when you compare it to the quote-unquote backyard photographs, and clearly the sling for the rifle is not positioned the same way and I forget which one One's in the middle of the stock.
Speaker 1:One is in the stock and one's on the back.
Speaker 2:Correct Completely different locations. So now the backyard photos. I've been doing some research on that recently and very interesting. When Oswald was arrested One of the things that the people who were in the room said he was shown that photo one of the photos and he protested.
Speaker 2:He said that's my face, but that's not my body. And he said, oh, according to the serial number was not out for general distribution, that was only a government-type thing. So when you look at the photo, the right arm has some bumps in it which Lee Harvey Oswald did not have. However, there was a guy named Roscoe White who's purported to be the badge man one of the positions behind the picket fence firing at Kennedy. In photos of Roscoe White he did have those bumps and at the time of the assassination he had recently gained employment as a Dallas police officer.
Speaker 2:And when you look at the photo, it's Mary Borman's photograph. She was on Elm Street and she took a Polaroid photo at the split second when JFK's head is hit. And years later, when technology developed, they were able to blow up a section of it and you could actually see a guy with a rifle he just fired. You see the muzzle flash and on his shoulder there's a Dallas police patch. You can't see it's not that good to see Dallas police patch, but it's the same shape and you also see where his badge is, hence the name Badge man and behind him you see a guy in a white t-shirt wearing a hard hat.
Speaker 2:And it's interesting, 25 years after the assassination there was a person who claimed to have been in front of the picket fence when the shot went over his left ear and he told the interviewers that when he was looking back there there was a guy there with a white T-shirt and a hard hat. That's the thing about the photograph. I think that there's a high degree of probability that Roscoe White was the person posing with the Mannlicher Carcano also the pistol and he had a communist newspaper in his hand. I don't believe that was Oswald and I do believe that they took Oswald's face and they put it onto the photo.
Speaker 2:And Oswald denied that was him right, yeah he said that's my face, but I didn't take this picture.
Speaker 1:So the gun didn't match, Oswald denied it and the best we could tell, whatever Oswald said, he seemed to be telling the truth. He never really.
Speaker 2:That's a very good point. Judge the initial statement coming out written. It's not a statement written. What would you call it? Evidence sheet talked about that Oswald was given a paraffin test to his hands and his cheek. So that test for nitrates and gunpowder. Now it is physically impossible to operate a bolt action rifle and not get the gases on your cheek. So what happened was Oswald tested negative for nitrates on his face. He tested negative for gunpowder on his face and on his hands and he only came up positive for nitrates on his hands. But people speculate that the nitrates he could have picked them up from handling boxes and paper at his job that day. The Dallas police and the local attorney there said that he tested positive. Now he didn't. The test proved that he didn't fire any gun that day. So he did. He protested his innocence. He said that he was a patsy, which is interesting terminology because that would indicate that you're something and that you feel that you're being blamed for something that you didn't do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was interesting that he used that word and a lot of things and that they paraded him in front of everybody and they paraded the gun in front of everybody.
Speaker 2:And another thing about the rifle is it went to the best fingerprint guy that the FBI had. He couldn't find anything. So then the rifle then went back to Dallas and the undertaker said that two people came into his establishment. They had a rifle with them and when they left he was preparing the body of Lee Harvey Oswald. The hands were filled with ink and it took him a long time to clean up his hands. So clearly, when they say that they had a palm print from Lee Harvey Oswald, it was done.
Speaker 1:After the fact yeah, after everything. All right Back to our timeline here, Before we get too ahead of ourselves. Supposedly there were two other trips that Kennedy were going to go on where it was possible that there was going to be some assassination attempt. One was right in Miami.
Speaker 2:Yes, one was in Miami and one was in Chicago. I believe the Miami one was September, October of 63, and the Chicago one was the first week in November of 63.
Speaker 1:So there were. From my understanding there was a possible Patsy had been set up, at least in one of them right.
Speaker 2:In both of them there was a Hispanic gentleman set up to be the Patsy in Miami and then a guy named Valley Thomas Valley, I believe his name was Interesting. He had a very common storyline to Oswald. He was an ex-Marine. He trained anti-Castro Cubans. He recently moved to Chicago and, lo and behold, his place of work was going to be on the parade route.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there was a Secret Service agent right that discovered it and that was recently. His name was Abraham Bolden, that's right, that's the name, and he was an African-American.
Speaker 2:Yes, and he was the first African-American agent on protection. He was part of the president's personal bodyguard. What happened was in late I think it was actually Halloween of 63, the Secret Service get notified from an informant named Lee that there's going to be an assassination attempt on President Kennedy while he's in Chicago and Abraham Bolden was aware of that. That assassination attempt was thwarted when a cleaning lady in a hotel and this is like that Clint Eastwood movie where he was the Secret.
Speaker 2:Service agent and this is like that Clint Eastwood movie where he was the Secret Service agent. She goes into the room to clean and she sees rifles and she sees a map of the parade route and she calls the police, contact the Secret Service. They were following these people. It seems, by all accounts, that they arrested two of them. Of course, the arrest records are no longer around, but they did their job and they stopped the assassination. What happened was after Dallas and the creation of the Warren Committee. Abraham Bolden wanted to go to give evidence as to that directly to the war committee and that's when he was arrested and they charged him with counterfeiting. And while he was in prison they were giving him psychological drugs.
Speaker 1:They're trying to make him seem as if he was crazy. And he actually was pardoned by President Biden Right.
Speaker 2:I know it was recent, which is interesting because we don't know why the president did that or why it took so long. I mean, he has a wonderful book and I believe he's still alive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think he is too Okay. So in March Marina sends a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington DC asking to be granted entrance visa back to the USR, which is interesting. Oswald is given notice that in the latter part of March that he's going to be terminated from his job and his job at Jager Childs Stovall which I don't know really what it is it's a very interesting job because from what some people speculate is that was a place where they were looking at the photographs during the U-2 overflights of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Speaker 2:So that place had a high-end security clearance.
Speaker 1:So they got rid of them right. So what about in April? Is the alleged that Oswald fires a bullet at General Edwin Walker?
Speaker 2:Right, that's one of the areas where people are. Some people said he did it, some people said he didn't. There one of the things which is odd there was a photograph purportedly taken the day of the assassin. Attempt failed and bullet missed by several feet of a car in the driveway. And during the FBI's control of that photograph the license plate was completely obscured. It was torn out, so nobody could tell whose car that was. I really don't have an opinion as to that. I don't think that Lee Harvey Oswald got up one day and said oh, I'm going to shoot General Walker. I believe that from the time he was a teenager, he was involved in various aspects of the intelligence network. A photograph was discovered in the 80s or 90s, when Oswald was still a teenager and he was part of David Ferry's Civil Air Patrol. And David Ferry had a long career as a CIA contract agent. He was also Carlos Marcello's pilot and an investigator for him as well.
Speaker 1:He's an interesting man physically, mentally, and how he was involved in all these CIA type issues? After Oswald, does Marina inform the FBI that it was her husband that fired the shot at the general, which is interesting. Who knows why she did that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, that's an area that there's not really a lot of speculation on. I don't know of any books or anything like that written by researchers on that specific area. But what is interesting is there was an attempt on General Walker. There was a shot fired, it missed. Now this guy's wife says my husband did did it and Oswald's not arrested. So that should tell you something. Either he couldn't have done it or it was done for a purpose and somebody told the FBI he's with us he's not going to get arrested.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So in April Johnson also tells reporters that Kennedy's going to go to Dallas sometime in the summer and hopes that he's going to eat breakfast in Fort Worth, lunch in Dallas, san Antonio, dinner in Houston. Then the next day later Oswald leaves Dallas by bus back to New Orleans seeking better employment opportunities apparently, opportunities, apparently. So in June President Kennedy and Johnson and Connolly are together for a meeting in El Paso where they agree to a second presidential visit in Texas later that year. And as we know, texas is an important state in the election process. So they're worried about the midterms as well as they're worried about the next election. Right, and now we're still. In June, kennedy decides to embark on a Texas trip with three basic calls to raise money for the Democratic Party, a presidential campaign, his quest for re-election in 64, and because Kennedy-Johnson ticket barely won Texas in 1960, which is quite interesting considering they had LBJ and even lost in Dallas to mend fences he's going to be leading some of the Texas Democratic members to be fighting politically to kind of work on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there was a serious rift between Senator Yarborough and LBJ and John Connolly. Yarborough was a liberal and they seemed to be at loggerheads. As a matter of fact, on the day of the assassination or it might have been the night before, according to Jacqueline Kennedy the worst fight that she ever heard her husband in with LBJ had to do with who was in the car, and LBJ did not want John connelly in the car, he wanted ralph yarborough in the car and yarborough ends up going with lbj in the car behind.
Speaker 1:I find that very curious at the time, probably not because it doesn't make sense, and I always find in life when things don't make sense it's because you don't know all the facts. Right, that is true, all right. In j Oswald applies for a US passport in New Orleans. Louisiana intends to depart New Orleans for a period of time October to December for the purposes of traveling as a tourist for three months and one year, whatever that means to companies like Albania, cuba, china, korea and Vietnam that are all under communist control, right? So then in September, jack Valenti sends an invitation to the White House asking the president Kennedy would attend a dinner in Houston in November 21st honoring Congressman Albert Thomas and his decision to retire from Congress. The invitation is received by the White House. In September, oswald has issued a 15-day Mexican tourist card using the name Lee Harvey Oswald. So okay, now, september 23rd, ruth Payne there's that name again, ruth Payne. To me, ruth Payne is one of the most interesting and significant figures on what goes on here.
Speaker 2:Yes, her sister is acknowledged to be a CIA officer. Most researchers feel that she was a CIA officer and just to understand the language, you could be a CIA contract agent, which means you're hired and paid to perform a specific task, or you could be an officer, which means that's your job. It's a civil service job. You're going to get a pension and all that.
Speaker 1:Right, where was I? Ruth Payne drives Marina Oswald to New Orleans back to her home in Irvin, texas. Oswald to New Orleans back to her home in Irvin, texas, late that night. Lee Oswald also leaves New Orleans to travel to Mexico City, hoping to somehow gain entrance to Cuba, a country which he traveled that had been banned by the United States.
Speaker 2:This is a very interesting part of the whole story and many significant researchers feel that the documentation that still exists in the National Archives has to do with the Mexico City episode. Somebody purported to be Lee Harvey Oswald goes to the Cuban embassy and that individual also speaks with the Russian who is in charge of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere. Now Mexico was a friend to the United States, so we had the whole area bugged and video photography and all that set up. So what happened was immediately after the assassination. So what happened was immediately after the assassination.
Speaker 2:J Edgar Hoover got a hold of the audio tape of Oswald in the Cuban embassy. So it seems that seven different FBI agents had dealings with Lee Harvey Oswald at one time or another. Hoover ordered all seven to listen to the tape. All seven reported unequivocally that was not Lee Harvey Oswald and I think it was. During the decade of the 80s. A photograph of the person purported to be Lee Harvey Oswald was released and it looks absolutely nothing like him. It's a short heavyset guy with a blonde crew cut Nothing like Oswald whatsoever. So what it seems is that the people setting up the assassination put somebody there so as to create a direct trail to both Cuba and Russia, and that seems to be the purpose of the whole Mexico City expedition right.
Speaker 1:Because it's interesting, because I don't know what time period, but it seems like somewhat prior to this, oswald was anti-communist and there's a video in an interview of the local news where he's handing out flyers against Cuba, and now he's trying to get in.
Speaker 2:That was in New Orleans and what happened there was. He was the only member of a Fair Play for Cuba committee.
Speaker 1:That's what it was.
Speaker 2:And he was handing out flyers in support of Cuba and whatnot. But when you look at the bottom of the flyer it was stamped 544, camp Street. Now in New Orleans there's two streets that come together, camp Street and Lafayette, and there's a building there, so it's one building with two separate entrances and addresses. On the Lafayette side that's where they had the offices of Guy Bannister. Guy Bannister was a former FBI agent and he was involved with training anti-Castro Cubans at Lake Pontchartrain. One of the people seen in the office consistently was David Ferry. Lee Harvey Oswald was seen in the office. There was another office there, the Anti-Communist League of the Caribbean, I believe. So it's certainly a strange place for a purported communist to be handing out these things when he's surrounded by right wingers.
Speaker 1:It's amazing, right, and?
Speaker 2:a researcher claims that when he traced the printing of that leaflet, it actually was from a CIA printing agency.
Speaker 1:So in September 30th. So we're getting closer. It's 63, lee Oswald purchases a bus ticket, alias Mr HO Lee. The bus leaves Mexico City for Laredo, texas, at 8.30 am on October 2nd. So on the 3rd he arrives in Dallas, spends the night at DeWay's MCA. On the 4th, governor Conley meets the president at the White House. Oswald applies for a job at Padgett yes, I believe that Padgett Printing but he is not hired because of poor recommendation from his old job, from the president Stovall. Robert Stovall of Jager Childs and Stovall Oswald returns to stay at the Payne's residence in Irving for the weekend. So obviously they accept all these invitations. So on October 15th in 1963, ruth Payne calls the Texas school depository, book depository, and arranges a job interview for Oswald with the building superintendent Roy truly, truly interverts all Oswald later that day and then hires him for a dollar and a quarter an hour.
Speaker 2:Extremely convenient yeah hour.
Speaker 1:Temporary clerk filing customer book orders. Oswald starts work the following day. At the same time, payne had separated from her husband, michael, and there is something about Michael's family being connected to the CIA too, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah. Researchers believe very strongly that he was a CIA officer and his family is either his family or her family. I think it's his. They went back to almost like the Pilgrims.
Speaker 1:They've been here for like a long time and there was some relationship between him or his family and Dulles or something. Yes, they had some familiar relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Or family friends 100 years ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1:Dulles was the head of the CIA before he was removed by Kennedy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what was it? Payne's father was friends with Dulles and they would be together at parties on these lavish estates, right yeah?
Speaker 1:October 24th, they're working through everything about the trip and on late October a United States ambassador of the UN, Adlai Stevenson II, delivers a contentious speech on the UN day at the Dallas Memorial Ornatarium, where he's booed and heckled and spat on.
Speaker 1:And spat on After he was stuck in his head with a picket sign. Dallas police would later feel similar demonstrations might occur when Kennedy visited Dallas. Seven people, including Stevenson, warned Kennedy against coming to Dallas, but Kennedy ignored their advice. Somewhere along the line they decide that Kennedy's visit is going to be November 21st and 22nd. So they plan out all these dinners and welcome dinners. So then in late October there starts to be these rumors that Kennedy may not choose LBJ as his running mate right, it was far more than a rumor.
Speaker 2:What was happening was—.
Speaker 1:Getting questions about it certainly.
Speaker 2:There was actually an investigation going on in Washington that Johnson was taking payments. He was taking bribes, which everybody knew that he was, but this time they were actually. It was in front of a committee and, as it were, on November 22, 1963, there was a gentleman who was giving evidence to that, as the bullets were flying in Dealey Plaza, and then he backed away from his statement and when he was questioned afterwards he says one thing to go after a vice president is a completely different thing to go after a president.
Speaker 2:I'm sure that is quite true, and what happened was, from all accounts, the organizer for the coup against Johnson was Bobby Kennedy. We also have that from a very important source. Evelyn Lincoln was JFK's secretary and she said Even from before he was president.
Speaker 2:Yes, she said unequivocally Johnson was not going to be on the ticket in 1964. So more than likely he was going to be in a federal prison. So you could see the pressure that was on him to make sure that events went well in Dealey Plaza. Also, I don't know if it was time or Newsweek, but the assassination occurred on a Friday. The assassination occurred on a Friday. Had that not happened, the next week's edition front page was going to be the stuff about Johnson. So it was that close the timing was that tight because had Kennedy survived.
Speaker 1:Dallas, literally within a week, the beginnings of the end of Johnson were going to be laid bare for everybody to see, that would have been something. Yeah, no, vietnam War. Yeah. So early November, gerald Bean, behind a Secret Service agent in charge for the White House detail, telephones Frank Sorrells who's a Secret Service of Dallas District. He instructs Sorrells to survey the buildings that the president is planning to visit, the Dallas leg of the trip. Two leading contenders were the Dallas Luncheon Trademark was brought by that wanted for Governor Connolly, and then also the Williams Building at the State Fairgrounds, which others favored. The White House Secret Service agent, winston Larson, informed that he's been assigned to the Dallas visit. So now there's all these Secret Service doing the preliminary stuff ahead of time.
Speaker 1:On November 6th the White House press secretary, pierre Salinger, who was a great press secretary by all accounts they kept everything from him because he had a big mouth, but he was a great secretary Announces the First Lady Kennedy will also accompany the President on this trip. Okay, now the first week of November or the 9th, oswald is driven by Ruth Payne to take his driver's license permit test. But because there was a special election that day, the office is closed On 2 pm to Oswald's test drive in his new Mercury Comet Calente. I guess that means hot right, hot Comet, two-door hardtop. So on the 12th there's a special advance group that's sent to all these places in Texas. So Connolly and O'Donnell, who is Kennedy's closest friend through everything at Harvard and everything I think he was the quarterback of the football team, right O'Donnell.
Speaker 2:Kenny.
Speaker 1:O'Donnell yeah. Oswald appears in the Albright parking garage to inquire about job openings. Kennedy delivers a speech in New York City at the AFL-CIO, then flies to West Palm Beach to spend his last weekend. White House announces the Dallas trademark. Until that point to specialize news media, kennedy's tight schedule would not allow enough time for a motorcade through Dallas On the 16th. Now we're talking the week before the assassination, civic leaders' statements urging against demonstrations, incidents that may occur from Kennedy's visit. Dallas County Judge WL Sturritt says I am hoping that we won't have any kind of demonstrations here. I have confidence that there won't be anything of the sort. That kind of thing can give a city and a county a black eye. On the 18th, kennedy confides in his good friend George Smathers of Florida. Vice President Johnson wants First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ride in the car with him during the upcoming tour in Texas.
Speaker 2:The exact motorcade route is then finalized At least he was gallant with that wanting Jackie to be out of the line of fire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe Well, everyone, that's the end of Part 1. Part 2 should be released in a couple of days and I hope you'll all listen, Thank you.
