History's Agenda
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History's Agenda
JFK: Stories From a Day In Dallas - Told by Historian Jack Stanley - Part One
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Few moments in American history have left as deep an imprint on our collective memory as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In this deeply personal exploration, historian Jack Stanley joins us to share not just historical facts, but intimate connections to the people and events surrounding that fateful day in Dallas.
The conversation begins with childhood memories—how learning of Kennedy's death transformed our understanding of the world. For many Americans who lived through November 22, 1963, the moment remains crystallized in time: where they were, how they heard the news, and the profound sense that something fundamental had changed. Stanley shares fascinating insights from his conversations with those who knew Kennedy personally, revealing the president's passion for history and reading that developed during his many periods of illness—a side of Kennedy rarely discussed in popular accounts.
We journey behind the scenes at CBS News with Walter Cronkite, learning how technological limitations shaped the breaking news coverage and how, remarkably, Cronkite was later reprimanded for appearing without a jacket during the broadcast—a small detail that illuminates the formal culture of 1960s television. Through Stanley's conversation with Liz Moynihan, we glimpse the ambitious plans of the Kennedy administration that never materialized, including extensive cultural initiatives beyond just the Kennedy Center.
The discussion also touches on controversial aspects of the assassination—witness accounts suggesting shots from the "grassy knoll," Daniel Patrick Moynihan's urgent but ignored calls to protect Lee Harvey Oswald, and how the Zapruder film fundamentally challenged the official narrative. These elements remind us why this moment continues to fascinate and trouble Americans decades later.
Whether you're a history buff or simply curious about how watershed moments shape our national identity, this conversation offers new perspectives on an event that continues to resonate through American culture. Listen now and join us in exploring how the past continues to inform our present.
Thank you, hello everyone and welcome back to A Better Life New York, as we've been diving into the JFK assassination, jfk incidents of his life, and today once again we have Jack Stanley, a historian that's had many conversations over his life regarding JFK with principal people that knew him. People were there, people that were involved in that time period or whatever it is. As you look around me, you can see that I am finally in the new studio. You could see some of my collection in the back. Hopefully the coloring's good. We need one or two more little things, maybe some light adjustments, but when you adjust lights by yourself, all you do is get up and down and you lose your rhythm and when you're looking at it live, it looks different than it does when it records and you look at it back Without further ado. Jack, how are you?
Speaker 1:I'm doing great Good to see you Good, good to see.
Speaker 2:You Love to talk about these things. I don't. I've told the story before. By the way, I have a test mug with the podcast on it and I couldn't wait to drink out of it. It just came today.
Speaker 2:My first memories of life were pretty much the kennedy assassination, and it's a childlike story. I was, I want to say, four or five years old at the time. Every day, my mother would take a break from cleaning the house. I wasn't even in school yet, or maybe I was in kindergarten, I don't know, but I was home and she would watch. She would have a cup of coffee, play games with me and watch her favorite soap opera as the world turns, and that was something we did every day. And I have a clear memory, if you can imagine, it's really my first memory of life because my mother was so visibly and totally upset when Walter Cronkite breaks in and says three shots rang out in Dallas at the presidential motorcade, more to come, or I forget what he says altogether, and the story goes on from there. So, jack, thank you for being here and I appreciate it. I don't know where you want to start.
Speaker 1:I guess maybe I should share my childhood memory to start things off. So we get into this. I was in school and I had recently done a report on President Kennedy because he had become, in our eyes, a big hero with the Cuban Missile Crisis. And it was a childish kind of thing that I did, but still he was my hero and I used to pretend I was President Kennedy. I set up my oval office in my little closet and I was sitting there signing bills, all kinds of stuff like that. He was my hero. And so I was in class and the teacher next to our class came rushing in and held a piece of paper up to her face like this, so we couldn't see what she was saying, which teachers used to do years ago, and my teacher started to cry I remember those days and we thought it was hilarious we're kids and we started laughing and she yelled at us and said be quiet.
Speaker 1:And she said your parents are going to be coming to get you. We didn't know what the hell was going on and it wasn't until I got into the car with my mother that I found out that President Kennedy at that point was dead and my hero had been killed. It was really very profound for me. It was transformative in many respects and my mother was an absolute wreck. She adored Kennedy. We used to watch all the press conferences. My family would sit around the TV and we'd watch them because they'd be all laughing and having a great time, because he was funny and he was smart. And I sat in front of the television as you did and I watched and he was young and he was Irish and he was Catholic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was different, he was from a different mold and we didn't know anything about him. We know a lot more now today, but at that time he was our knight in shining armor. That's the way we kind of looked at him. And our knight in shining armor was shot down and killed and his replacement was Lyndon Johnson. He was nowhere near as exciting and interesting as President Kennedy had been to me, and so I got rid of my little oval office in my closet and never pretended I was president again. Interesting thing. It was very I don't know what word I want to use, but it had a profound effect upon me as assassination.
Speaker 2:Sure, absolutely.
Speaker 2:As a kid I mean the day. I, I remember it. I remember what I and the next phase. My mother called my father at work and he worked as a laundry truck driver. In those days he drove a laundry truck, had been in the service, he got out and that was his job and but no one knew what to say. They had to tell everybody but no one knew what to say after that. So it was honey. But the next thing was that on sunday mornings my mother used to buy those pillsbury dough packs, or you slam it on the corner of the right and it would pop open, yeah yeah, that's where they get popping first and then she would take them, put them in the oven and then we'd each get a couple and eat them with butter.
Speaker 2:In the morning they would drink coffee, we would drink milk I don't know, I wasn't a milk guy, so I don't know and we'd sit around, usually in the kitchen on Sunday morning together as a family me, my sister, my mother, my father, me, my sister, my mother, my father. But that sunday we knew that they were walking out lee, harvard's, the oswald's, and we were going to get a look at this guy live. And so it comes we're all sitting there in a living room with our drinks and our little things and they kill oswald right in front of our face. And that was such a traumatic event. I remember my father saying he just turned to us all and said that's the end of that. We're never really going to ever know what really happened. So those are most of my memories, other than the first time you saw the Zapruder film on Geraldo. You saw the frames in Life, or was it Look?
Speaker 1:it was Life.
Speaker 2:I remember looking at those my mother kept them forever in her underwear drawer and she used to take it out and look at it every once in a while for years afterwards.
Speaker 1:I still have them. I still have them really, you know cause it was, once again, it had profound meaning to me because this was the guy that kind of got me interested in history in many respects, cause he talked about history all the time and I studied everything.
Speaker 2:Profiles in courage yeah.
Speaker 1:Where he talked about one of my heroes yeah, was John Quincy Adams, who was one of John F Kennedy's heroes. Who was one of John F Kennedy's heroes, and years later, when I got to meet people who knew him and who had conversations with him, they said, oh, he loved history, he would read constantly because he was a very sick young man and an adult as well, many times with the back issues, with the many other issues that they said didn't exist which did, and he was bedridden quite often and he would always have a books.
Speaker 2:Oh, tremendous amount of drugs, yeah, yeah, tremendous amount of drugs and what went on. And it's funny because a former family member of mine through marriage, who's passed, played for the Washington Redskins from 59 to 71, I think. So he was there when the president was in the White House and he had a player that had gone to school with Kennedy, so they used to go over there with friends, as they say, and drop by and drop the friends off and then pick them up later for a toned down version of what used to go on. And then he was the captain of the team and he was involved in the conversations whether we play or not on on the Sunday after the assassination.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a big deal. There were a lot of conversations being the captain.
Speaker 2:It was a big deal and it was very interesting and that's the way it is. And he ended up, even though he did a lot for Kennedy, he ended up being a Republican and ended up being a Nixon appointee to the Department of to DEA, as any reported to Nixon actually.
Speaker 1:Nixon and Jack Kennedy were actually rather unfriendly terms, as was the Nixon family, the Kennedy family. Old Joe quite often would go into Nixon's campaign offices, where he'd be and hand him a check to support his campaign. And in 1960, he said if my son wasn't running I'd be rooting for you. But they actually had some good conversations Politically. But they actually had some good conversations Politically. They always made sure they did not say anything good about each other, but on private terms they were sociable and friendly, much less so than people would think oh, I forget.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:But Nixon still resented him. Oh, of course he was Something that Nixon had a struggle.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he did. I did an interview In 2007. With Mike Wallace, of 60 Minutes, it was my turn to interview him and we did the talk in his house, in his kitchen, barefoot. Everybody has the qualifications. And so the thing was he was describing Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1:I asked him a couple of things real quick. He said I said what was the greatest, who had the greatest intellect you ever saw? And without missing a beat, he said Richard Nixon. I said you've interviewed everybody. And he said Richard Nixon. And he said to me he said Richard Nixon was incredible. He said he had an immense and amazing intellect, marred by an imperfect personality, and I thought that was a fantastic description of Nixon. And he said Nixon asked him to be his press secretary, interestingly enough, and he said he refused. But it's interesting to think that Mike Wallace was very liberal and Nixon was somewhat of a liberal Republican, but still nonetheless. You'd never expect him to ask Mike Wallace that. And Mike Wallace knew JFK, of course, and he went to school with him in Brookline Massachusetts, because that's where JFK was from, originally, brookline Massachusetts and when they were kids they went to school together.
Speaker 2:My very good friend's mother I don't know if we ever talked about this spoke about it was one of Nick Kennedy's secretaries. He had that group of women that were like amazing secretaries.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:In fact, after he'd been shot, his mother was the one that answered all the condolence notes for Jackie and when his mother passed and he's up there, he's in his late 80s, I want to say had this treasure trove of documents and notes from Jackie and pictures with JFK and notes from Kennedy and notes from the dad, joseph and Robert, and all these things, and I was like you should put this in a museum. He goes. Well, this is my life. It's not museum, but everybody's life is a museum to some extent when you're at that, yeah, when you're in that level. But which? Which was? Which is an amazing when you read these heartfelt notes, especially from jackie, in those days and it's funny just to Just to digress on Jackie a minute so when I was so I'm 66.
Speaker 2:When I was 18 or 19, I worked on Fifth Avenue in this real fancy shoe store and back then a pair of women's boots were between $600 and $800. Okay, so we're talking a long time ago. Shoes were like $300 a pair. It was a very expensive place and I had met and seen, see, jackie Onassis came in once, oh boy, and she was. She had her shoes.
Speaker 2:I don't think I told you this story before she had her shoes in her hand that had destroyed. She threw them on the counter and she said these didn't hold up. I only wore them once. Now she's married to onassis time. She's not poor. And the guy behind the counter said, yeah, you wore them once, once around the world. That didn't go over. Well, the manager ended up going to her apartment, wherever that was, and bring her shoes to pick which ones to replace them, and she was not nice even a little on that day. So it was funny because that day was in my mind when I'm reading these heartfelt notes that she's writing to people. She had a lot of different scenes to me and I remember that day and saying to people listen, she was driving in her car and her husband had his brains blown out right in front of her on national television. And it's 50 years later and everybody's still talking about it. That's a cross to bear that we can't imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can understand that. But but she was known for being pretty, but anyway, pretty pushing, yeah, yeah when you've got the bucks like no one else to tolerate when you've got the bucks Like no one else to tolerate. When you've got the bucks, you got the power. It changes you.
Speaker 2:It's funny in that store my customer, my other customer I had Beverly Sassoon at the time, who was nice. She used to come in with her husband's boyfriend to buy shoes for me Not with her husband, Never saw him in my life, maybe once but she'd come in with her husband's boyfriend and they and she would buy things and they were so wealthy. Whatever you showed them they'd take it john lennon, yoko ono used to come. They would pull up in the limousine. They had one salesperson they dealt with. I remember her name was annie, and yoko would open the limousine door if she didn't see her sitting right there, they drove off. So there were a lot of experiences like that. We came here to talk about a little bit about the JFK, yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:There's so many things to talk about. We could talk for a month on Sundays.
Speaker 2:We spoke. That's because when you and I speak, you say something that opens something up in my mind. I say something that opens something in your mind, and then we go on and on. That's what happens. That's what happens when you're old. You have experience. But this is true, but I'm old, me too. I'm right there. I'm right there with you.
Speaker 1:But getting back to JFK, I wanted to share a couple of things. First off, it was my fortune to talk, to interview, see talk on the phone with many people, some who knew JFK. In one case I saw a talk by an individual who was at his stretcher at the hospital in Parkland but had fascinating conversations with a number of people about John F Kennedy and I thought, since we started this with the assassination, I thought I would talk about Walter Cronkite. I think that would be an apropos thing and we can go from there into different parts of this whole story. I met with Walter Cronkite.
Speaker 2:That day defined him in the beginning. That day, that live broadcast that kind of defined it. He had this humanity about him. That day he took a step back. Now the Vietnam War did and other things he did and his respectability, but certainly to me that was the day where he had to be on national television and describe the unthinkable.
Speaker 1:That's the day he became Uncle Walter. We looked at him. We looked at him as like America's newsman. I talked to him, I spent pretty much an afternoon with recording and doing a lot of stuff with him. On the 21st of January in 2000 at CBS we stayed in his suite at CBS. He had a lovely office suite there and we sat and talked and we made some recordings and stuff like that and he told me the story of the Kennedy assassination from his viewpoint.
Speaker 1:He said that they were all in the newsroom and everything was turned off and they were relaxing. They were in their shirt sleeves and whatever, because they always look very grim and proper on screen, their shirt sleeves and whatever, because they always look very grim and proper on screen. And suddenly from the teletype all of a sudden came three shots fired in Dallas and all of a sudden they're all running around like chickens without heads. And the thing is that everything was turned off. The cameras in those days used tubes, so they took quite a while to warm up. So he said turn the cameras on and so they had to work. So they went on to the radio network and made the first announcements via the radio network on the television because they could not do any TV stuff because the cameras were not warmed up and it took about 15, 20 minutes.
Speaker 2:I remember that it was just a.
Speaker 1:They used to have those things, those flash this is an important bulletin from CBS News that kind of thing, and so he did that several times.
Speaker 2:Now that you say it, I remember a bulletin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he did that several times with every new teletype message that came times Now that you say it, I remember Bulletin. Yeah, he did that several times with every new teletype message that came in. And finally the cameras warmed up and he got on and he started talking and they didn't know anything. He said the only thing they knew was they were making phone calls, they had a correspondent down there, dan Rather, and also the stuff that was coming through the teletype, and all the telephones were locked up because no one could get a message back and forth because everybody was on the phone from the Dallas area. It was a very different time. The telephones worked very differently. It was a very different time. The telephones worked very differently.
Speaker 1:And he said they did the thing on the television until they got the announcement that a priest had just done the last rites and they said we knew he was dead but we couldn't say it Right. And he said he had to wait. And finally, when the message came, then he did that famous announcement where he took off his glasses and said president kennedy died 35 minutes ago and then they just kept broadcasting. It wasn't until about an hour later that they looked at each other and said oh my goodness, we did the cardinal sin of CBS. We forgot to put our jackets on.
Speaker 1:And suddenly there was a phone call from William Paley, who's the head of CBS, and Cronkite got brought up to the office and said you weren't wearing your jacket. And he said I got slightly reprimanded. Of course they understood, but still, you always wore a jacket when you were on the news. It's just an interesting thing people don't know this story that you don't even notice the fact that he's not wearing a jacket because you're so focused on everything else. They did it in shirt sleeves, which was a cardinal sin.
Speaker 2:And Paley, was you remember? He was relentless on Edward R Murrow for what he did. Yeah, and that was a decade before, maybe, maybe a little less, yeah, a little less.
Speaker 1:yeah, it was a totally different code in those days the codes were different.
Speaker 1:You did not. A gentleman did not appear on the screen without a jacket. A woman did not appear without a dress, it was all. It was a very different world. It's a very different world for people to understand today, going so far as talking on the TV without a jacket Of course it was national news. The last thing they were thinking of is put on the damn jacket, the president's been shot. So I just thought that was a very interesting observation by him that he shared. I thought that was a fascinating story.
Speaker 2:But those things always happen in the aftermath, right, sure, after it's done, somebody who has nothing to do with what happened in the anarchy of the moment right, it's definitely anarchy of the moment. Certainly wasn't Dallas, and I'm sure it was in every news studio in America, but Paley would sit up in his golden palace up there and he literally owned CBS.
Speaker 1:He ruled it like a monarch Right.
Speaker 2:People don't know about him today he ruled it yeah he started cbs right columbia broadcasting system with radio and then became television. Right, it's a different world and you think about things today and companies that are started. You think of Elon Musk. He runs. You know how he runs his company. Paley ran CBS like that back in the day.
Speaker 1:Now another thing just to mention to you, another interview I did. I spent a couple of days at the Gettysburg Battlefield Monument with Liz Moynihan. Now you might not know who Liz Moynihan is, but she was Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's widow.
Speaker 2:Another legend in politics.
Speaker 1:Oh, indeed, he was. He was, yes, and he was fascinating.
Speaker 1:I saw him once and brilliant yeah, oh, he was the statesman and she was the politician and they were very involved in the Kennedy administration and they had all kinds of plans set up and she was telling me about the various meetings she had with JFK, how they were trying to set up this whole thing which was going to be the big theater. They were going to have a series of buildings all around where there'd be theaters and museums and all kinds of things together. The only thing that came out of that, unfortunately, was just Kennedy Center. But he had big plans and would have been very fascinating had he lived.
Speaker 1:Nonetheless, they were asked to come to the White House when JFK's body was returned to the White House and they were there as the official body of the cabinet to basically be there when the body was brought back to the White House and Daniel Patrick Moynihan was meeting with the press and he said the first thing you've got to do is have secret service protection for Oswald. He said you've got to protect that man Because we've got to find out what he knows and nobody did anything. Probably was a reason for that, but nonetheless he met with the reporters and there was a, as liz moynihan told me. She said he was sitting there with reporters, pounding his fist on the desk, saying I said make sure you get Secret Service men around him and he said no, but he did. Can I use that word? A goddamn thing. Yeah, she was fascinating she knew.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she knew everybody. It was fascinating, she knew.
Speaker 1:Yeah, she knew everybody. It was fascinating. We went to, as I said, we went to the Gettysburg Battlefield with a couple of historians and myself and her, and they were in the front seat. We were in the back seat. We talked politics and we talked history together and it was fun, it was a master class. She told me stories I had never heard before. She did not get along with Hillary Clinton, which is another story altogether and another show. I'll tell you the things that she said Fascinating, but she was really immersed in the Kennedy administration. She said it was such a pity that all these great ideas, all these new ideas, all these young people that were getting involved, suddenly it was all over and nobody had any interest anymore. Now let's go to Dallas, november the 22nd, at 11.30 In the morning I guess it was 11 or 12.30, I'm not sure which the time that it was there, when they're riding in the open motorcade.
Speaker 2:The broadcast was around 1240,. I think so it was probably 1130, right central time.
Speaker 1:And then Kennedy is shot. We didn't really know much of anything because there was hardly. There was no evidence, there was no images, there was just people sitting there saying things that nobody seemed to want to agree with, like they felt they heard the shots coming over their head and they were sitting there by a picket fence, which of course now is known as the grassy knoll. But people kept saying I was in the military, I know what gunshots are and I heard one go over me, but no one listened to this.
Speaker 2:That's what Kenny O'Donnell said. Kenny O'Donnell was there and he was a World War II vet and he said I heard more than I heard shots over my head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was Okay. So the whole thing is that Of course he's hit the car Behind the limousine which they called the I forget what they called the battleship or something like that. They had a name for it. I forget the name of it, but that was where all the Secret Service men were that got splattered with blood. The whole story of that assassination would have worked well with the Warren Report had not a slight inconvenience been released, and that was the Zapruder film.
Speaker 1:And of course Zapruder was a clothier, if I recall correctly, in there and he was big into taking home movies. He took the movie and it was purchased by life magazine and of course the fbi, cia got copies and they were going to make sure it was never seen and then, through a little bit of chicanery, a copy was made of a copy, so the details weren't too clear, but it was shown on the Geraldo Rivera show. Now the thing is that totally changes the entire understanding of the assassination. Totally changes the entire understanding of the assassination. How could Lee Harvey Oswald be behind him, take three shots? Two were the only ones that could hit, because somebody else got hit by a bullet. By the way, not by a bullet, I should say a fragment of a sidewalk that got hit by a bullet and it hit their cheek and they were bleeding, so that destroyed one bullet, and so they had to come up with this absolutely asinine and insane thing called the magic bullet, which said that the bullet did he inspector right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was one of the lawyers working for that team. He came up with that idea.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
