Bryce Zabel's INSTANT HISTORY

Bobby Kennedy - Gone Forty Years Now

Sadly, we're coming up on the anniversary of that time nearly forty years ago when hope was crushed by another assassin's bullet. This picture you see is done by pop artist Roy Lichtenstein and originally debuted as the cover of Time magazine the week before Robert Kennedy's untimely death.

Bobby Kennedy was a pop star as Lichtenstein portrayed him,  but he was more complicated than that, too. As Time noted in that last article before his death -- "The Politics of Restoration" --

"They pronounce his boyish name with fear and derision or else with adoration and awe. To many enemies, he is more his father's son than his brother's brother."

During his lifetime, Robert Kennedy was widely seen as his brother's hatchet man, and the word "ruthless" followed him everywhere. By 1968, when he died, though, he had grown. Pat Moynihan said of him, "Much has been given him and taken from him in life, and somehow he has been enlarged by both experiences."

Although Bobby (RFK) has won the California primary on the day of his death, he had also just concluded a slugfest with Senator Eugene McCarthy for the Democratic presidential nomination where the result had hardly been pre-ordained. Kennedy had had to fight McCarthy across the entire nation. When Kennedy triumphantly claimed victory here in Los Angeles at the Ambassador Hotel, he had settled the issue of who would be the anti-war candidate at the upcoming Democratic convention. Then he was murdered. He was 42 years old, even younger than his brother when he was murdered five years earlier.

I've always loved this Newsweek cover about RFK's death ("Once Again...Once Again," June 17, 1968). The photo, taken by Phil MacMullan, captures not only Bobby Kennedy's more soulful, empathetic side but also how the ghost of his brother and that previous assassination hung over him. If you CLICK on this cover, you can see it in even better detail.

Back then, I was living in Oregon where only the week before Kennedy had lost the Oregon primary to McCarthy. It was the first election any Kennedy had lost since their family got into politics. Kennedy desperately needed a win in California to get the momentum needed to take out Vice-President Hubert Humphrey at the Chicago convention that summer. Our family supported McCarthy, but we liked Kennedy a great deal, too. It was a tough choice. I remember seeing him speak in the auditorium at Hillsboro High School right before the election. He was three hours late but we waited because he was a rock star quality politician.

Anyway, Oregon is in the same time zone as California, so it was just after midnight when my dad came and woke me up. "Kennedy's been shot in California," he said. We went downstairs and watched the TV for news and kept up the vigil until he succumbed to his wounds the next day.

This issue, of course, is dominated by news of the murder. The lead article begins, "Once again, the flags slid down to half-staff." They also noted:

"In the last few years, Bobby had emerged dramatically from the shade of his murdered brother. He became increasingly concerned with the quality of of U.S. life in general, and in particular with the plight of the poor and the downtrodden, black and white alike."

That's probably why he lost Oregon. It was not a hugely diverse state population back then and the simple passion of McCarthy's anti-war crusade played better in a place where there were no huge urban cities.

On the Table of Contents page, they usually would have a short piece of writing setting up the pieces to follow. In this issue, they broke with their form and printed a long excerpt from a speech ("Ripple of Hope") RFK had given on June 6, 1966 in South Africa. That was exactly two years to the day before he was murdered and now, in 2008, we should celebrate that speech's importance at the same time we mourn the 1968 murder. Here it is, as they presented it:

"Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road that history has marked out for us. Like it or not, we live in times of danger and uncertainty. But they are more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of new ideas and bold projects. Rather it will belong to those who can blend vision, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideas and great enterprises of American society."

Maybe our politicians today should consider those words and take them to heart. There is an entire web-site devoted to this speech and you can even download it and listen to it. Check it out.

Here is the full speech, by the way, that Robert Kennedy delivered only two months before his own death. It was given the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot.

I loved the complexity that RFK brought to the scene. A decade ago, on the NBC series "Dark Skies", my partner Brent Friedman and I made Bobby a continuing character who had aided our main character John Loengard in getting proof of the Roswell UFO crash to his brother, shortly before his own assassination. In our twisted historical romp, Bobby was running for President in 1968 largely to finish the business of telling the American people about the alien invasion. He was played in four episodes by the wonderful actor James Kelly who had also played him in a TV movie.

I know, I know. Putting Bobby into a sci-fi film is completely insane. The sad part of the story, though, is that we felt like it was okay to play this historical subversion because both JFK and RFK had been gone so long from the scene that they had slid into that zone where they were iconic characters who could be used in literature. Like Lincoln, gone so long that novelists are hardly afraid to use him in their literature.

Robert Kennedy might still be alive today had he not been shot. He would have been 83 years old. My own father lived within a year of that.

The Best Inaugural Speech Ever

In less than a year now, a new president will stand before a crowd in Washington, D.C. and take the oath of office. At this point we can say with certainty that it will be historic. It might be a woman, an African-American, or even a former POW. One thing is already pretty clear and that's the simple fact that after this barn-burner of an election, whoever gives their first inaugural speech is going to be speaking to an entire world that is poised to listen.

48 years ago, the inaugural was similarly a piece of history. Not only was it jeopardized by bad weather, but it brought generational change to the White House. It was at that tiime that newly elected President John Kennedy spoke those words we still remember.

"Ask not what your country can do for you..." We've heard this so many times, we can finish JFK's words in our sleep.  That speech, delivered on a brutally cold January day in 1961 where a blizzard threatened to shut down the entire affair, still goes down as the best inauguration speech, probably ever, certainly of the 20th century.

This is actually my favorite newsmagazine cover -- the day that John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency.  It's a color photograph that Time's editors had decided two weeks earlier should be taken at the precise moment when he raised his right hand and took the oath as the nation's 35th President.  Just possibly this was the last inauguration where Americans were absolutely filled to the brim with the possibilities that life would be getting much, much better.

Time -- with coverage coming from 17 correspondents -- led with the speech itself -- definitely getting right that it would become the classic speech, the one by which all others have been measured.

A blizzard threatened to turn the whole momentous occasion into a farce -- but President John Kennedy, delivering his inaugural address, more than saved the day.  Kennedy's inauguration speech went beyond mere rhetoric derived from the U.S. past; it has profound meaning for the U.S. future.  In lean, lucid phrases the nation's new President pledged to the U.S. to remain faithful to its friends, firm against its enemies but always willing to bring an end to the cold war impasse.

Sometimes, like the JFK coverage, they got the story just right.  That's the fun of the Instant History blog.  There will be other times where the writing of the moment was swayed by being too inside the story to see clearly.  And there will be other times still where you will see that issues of political correctness and other bias have twisted the honest reporting of the moment into something that the original journalists would never agree with.

Reaction to the speech was immediate.  From all shades of political outlook, from people who had voted for Kennedy in November and people who had voted against him, came a surge of praise and congratulation. Even so partisan a Republican as Senate Minority Leader Everett McKinley Dirksen described it as "inspiring" and as "a very compact message of hope."

The Time reporters here got the speech just right.  Who knew when President Kennedy delivered that address that he and his presidency would end in such a tragic manner that it would affect Americans' sense of trust in their own government and that, as the years passed, he would be revealed to have had such huge personal flaws in terms of his risk-taking behavior?

One thing that impressed me in re-reading this article was how close we came to never hearing that speech delivered in the stirring way it was given.  Snow had started to fall the night before and kept falling. 

By nightfall on inaugural eve, confusion was complete.  At least 10,000 cars were stalled and abandoned.  Airplanes stacked up over the airport, then flew away; Herbert Hoover, winging up from Miami, had to turn back, never got to the inaugural.  It took Pat Nixon 2 1/2 hours to get from her Wesley Heights home to the Senate Office Building, where her husband was holding a farewell party for his staff. . . At the White House, 30 members of President Eisenhower's staff were snowbound for the night.  Determined partygoers struggled through the storm, some of the men in white ties and parkas, some of the women wearing leotards under their gowns.

Eventually, though, on that terribly cold day, the story was all about hope... a time when a leader could challenge us to "...ask what you can do for your country" without getting in a big political debate.

One year until the next inaugural day.

JFK's Reality Before Dallas

John F. Kennedy still has it, over forty years after his death. There are three books out in the last few months that take on the case. The new run started with LBJ finger-pointing in E. Howard Hunt's American Spy, followed by David Talbot's Brothers. The last one out is also the best from a research point-of-view, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History. I like Bugliosi's because of its attention to detail (it's 1612 pages!) which brings us to this post.

As readers of Instant History know, this site is dedicated to reading the words and thoughts of people at the time, not as history had modified them over the years. Here is a fascinating example that is not widely talked about, specifically because JFK was martyred, and that is that he had his share of political resistance before he ever got on the plane to Dallas.

Our case in point is this issue of Time magazine which was, ironically, just hitting the nation's newstands and mailboxes as the real events in Dallas unfolded. It's dated November 22, 1963.

The cover features Washington hostess Nicole Alphand, wife of then French ambassador to the U.S. Herve' Alphand. It details the capitol's social whirl, saying that from September to May there are roughly 200 official parties a month in Washington, perhaps 20 times as many private ones, and that Alphand was among the best of the dozens of hostesses keeping the champagne pouring and the canapes circulating. It's hard to imagine the French ambassador and his wife being the toast of Washington these days, isn't it?

What is arresting about this issue, however, is the political talk and the reporting that mentions President Kennedy. It's easy to look back now and think that Kennedy was a shoo-in for re-election but this issue starts out with its "Nation" section devoted to Republicans who seem to be falling over themselves for a chance to take him on.

In the late fall of 1963 the basic Republican Party facts are these: Only a year ago Nelson Rockefeller seemed to have his party nomination wrapped up, and only a month ago that same nomination appeared to be Goldwater's for the asking. But, unless it has an incumbent President seeking re-election, no party can afford to concede its highest prize so far in advance.

The big article, then, was about whether or not Richard Nixon is going to try to get the nomination from Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. But New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller is also a factor (and would have been the front-runner if he hadn't divorced his wife and gotten re-married a year earlier). Also honorably mentioned as possible candidates were Michigan Governor George Romney and Pennsylvania Governor William Scranton. What's quite interesting, though, is the interview Time has with Nixon.

"...it's because there is a disillusionment with Kennedy. The election results in the major cities are a storm signal. So there is the possibility that Kennedy could be beaten, and this is an increasing possibility. As this possibility increases, so does the interest in getting a Republican who can win. I find there is a correlation between Kennedy's failures and interest in me. As he goes down, the stock of any potential Republican candidate goes up."

In that same interview, former vice-president Nixon (and 1960 nominee) speaks about Vietnam, especially the U.S. endorsed military coup in South Viet Nam that he thought could render Kennedy vulnerable.

"If this Viet war goes sour, Viet Nam could be a hot issue next year. If it goes well, it won't be. It's strange to me, when we are fawning over Tito, catering to Kadar, accommodating Khrushchev, we don't have the decency to express our sympathy to a family which was a real foe of Communism."

Next up in the magazine was their section called "The Presidency" which included a round-up of Kennedy's week. It starts by pointing out that the normally upbeat Kennedy had been in "ill humor" at his last press conference (the one that would be the last of his presidency) over the failure of Congress to move on his tax cut proposal (a reminder that George Bush wasn't the only tax-cutter) and his various civil rights bills. Kennedy, by the way, wanted to cut $11-billion in taxes in 1960 dollars.

Kennedy had also visited Arlington National Cemetery that week, the place that would become his final resting place, and had taken his 2 1/2 year old son, John Jr. or "John-John." The shocker in this article, however, detailed a trip to New York taken by Kennedy. Check this out.

Near week's end, Kennedy flew into Manhattan, aged his Secret Service detail ten years by forgoing the usual motorcycle escort into the city. At one of ten midtown traffic lights that stopped the presidential limousine, an ambitious female camera bug rushed up and fired a flashbulb at Kennedy's side of the car. Moaned a New York police official: "She might well have been an assassin." (italics mine) As for the purpose of the President's stop-and-go entrance into New York, the official explanation was that he wanted no "fuss and feathers."

Another item that goes against the post-assassination perception grain was later in the magazine, under the "Education" section in an article that tried to describe college students of 1963. It calls them "The Personalists" -- people who stress self-development -- and discusses their disillusionment with, of all people, John Kennedy. Chatham College's Edward Eddy cites "youth's decreasing identification with the Kennedy Administration," tracing it to "the shock and the terror" that hit collegians during last fall's Cuban crisis.

Campus disenchantment with President Kennedy now spreads far and wide. At conservative Georgia Tech, the complaint is that "he's interfering with my personal life" through Big Government. At liberal Reed, where "he doesn't inspire respect as Stevenson did," the gripe is Kennedy's caution on the civil rights bill. At exuberant Wisconsin, "he's liked in a negative way," faulted for lack of political conviction. "We're sick of him," say dissidents at Jesuit Georgetown.

How much of this is truly representative and how much is wishful Time thinking preparing the battlefield for a presidential election less than a year away is debatable. It's clear, however, that a week before he died, President John F. Kennedy had already established a habit of lax security on his travels and presided over a country where he still had a lot of enemies. Those two issues, brought out by Time in this issue, would come together in Dallas of the real-world timeline and write a powerful final chapter to his life.

Charles Whitman: America's First College Mass Murderer

Although the outrage and sorrow over Virginia Tech feels brand-new, this current tragedy isn't the first time some mentally-disturbed student grabbed a gun and started a shooting rampage on a college campus. That distinction goes back to 1966 and University of Texas at Austin architecture student Charles Whitman.

Seung-hui Cho's rampage at Virginia Tech last Monday killed 32 teachers and students and wounded more than two dozen others. Based on what we now know, it was long premeditated. Planning also went into the act of rage on that hot August day when Whitman went to three different stores to buy his guns and ammo, then went back to the University of Texas campus where he ascended to the observation deck of the limestone tower that soars 307 feet above the grounds. Here is how Time magazine described it in their August 12, 1966 issue in a cover article, "Madman in the Tower."

"Methodically, he began shooting everyone in sight. Ranging around the tower's walk at will, he sent his bullets burning and rasping through the flesh and bone of those on the campus below, then of those who walked or stood or rode as far as three blocks away. Somewhat like the travelers in Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, who were drawn by an inexorable fate to their crucial place in time and space, his victims fell as they went about their various tasks and pleasures. By lingering perhaps a moment too long in a classroom or leaving a moment too soon for lunch, they had unwittingly placed themselves within Whitman's lethal reach. Before he was himself perforated by police bullets, Charles Whitman killed 13 people and wounded 31—a staggering total of 44 casualties. As a prelude to his senseless rampage, it was later discovered, he had also slain his wife and mother, bringing the total dead to 15."

Much has been made about the how the system failed to find and deal with Cho before he boiled over. Whitman also had been in the psychiatric system.

"His parents' separation troubled Charlie deeply, and last March 29, he finally went to Dr. Maurice Heatly, the University of Texas' staff psychiatrist. In a two-hour interview, he told Heatly that, like his father, he had beaten his wife a few times. He was making "intense efforts" to control his temper, he said, but he was worried that he might explode. In notes jotted down at the time, Heatly described Whitman as a "massive, muscular youth" who "seemed to be oozing with hostility." Heatly took down only one direct quote of Whitman's—that he was "thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people." That did not particularly upset Heatly; it was, he said, "a common experience for students who came to the clinic to think of the tower as the site for some desperate action."* Nonetheless, Heatly urged Whitman to return the next week to talk some more. Charlie Whitman never went back. Instead, some time in the next few months, he decided to act."

And act he did. The evening before his trip to the tower, Whitman sat at a battered portable in his modest brick cottage. Kathy, his wife of four years (they had no children), was at work. This is what his note said:

"I don't quite understand what is compelling me to type this note. I've been having fears and violent impulses. I've had some tremendous headaches. I am prepared to die. After my death, I wish an autopsy on me to be performed to see if there's any mental disorders. I intend to kill my wife after I pick her up from work. I don't want her to have to face the embarrassment that my actions will surely cause her...Life is not worth living."

After writing that note, he drove to his mother's house  and stabbed Margaret Whitman in the chest and shot her in the back of the head, somehow also breaking several bones in her left hand with such force that the band of her diamond engagement ring was driven into her finger and the stone broken loose. This time he wrote a hand-printed note addressed to "To Whom It May Concern."

"I have just killed my mother. If there's a heaven, she is going there. If there is not a heaven, she is out of her pain and misery. I love my mother with all my heart."

Whitman gave less attention than Cho to his post-death PR campaign, though, and more to his actual violent siege in the tower. He stuffed the following Into a green duffel bag and a green foot locker: Spam, Planters peanuts, fruit cocktail, sandwiches and boxes of raisins, jerricans containing water and gasoline, rope, binoculars, canteens, transistor radio, toilet paper, and, in a bizarre allegiance to the cult of cleanliness, a plastic bottle of Mennen spray deodorant. He also stowed away a private armory that seemed sufficient to hold off an army: machete, Bowie knife, hatchet, a 6-mm. Remington bolt-action rifle with a 4-power Leupold telescopic sight (with which, experts say, a halfway decent shot can consistently hit a 6½-in. circle from 300 yds.), a 35-mm. Remington rifle, a 9-mm. Luger pistol, a Galesi-Brescia pistol and a .357 Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver. At home, he left three more rifles, two derringers.

"Then, deciding that he needed even more firepower, he went to Sears, Roebuck and bought a 12-gauge shotgun on credit, sawed off both barrel and stock. He visited Davis Hardware to buy a .30-cal. carbine. And at Chuck's Gun Shop, he bought some 30-shot magazines for the new carbine. All told, he had perhaps 700 rounds."

Whitman opened fire at 11:48 am and had four minutes to pick off his targets before police were notified. Soon more than 100 officers would converge on the scene. But he had the higher ground and his shots continued to be deadly. In contrast, the officers were trying to hit a hidden target and their shots were ineffectual. A sharpshooter was put in a light plane but was driven off by the sniper's fire. Eventually, four men (three cops and a civilian) made their way by subterranean passage to the tower. None had ever fired a shot in the line of duty or combat. Here's how they took him down.

"The four rode to the 27th floor, headed single file up the last three flights, carefully removed a barricade of furniture that Whitman had set at the top of the stairs. While cops on the ground intensified their fire to divert Whitman's attention, Martinez slowly pushed away the dolly propped against the door leading to the walkway around the tower, crawled out onto its south side and began moving stealthily to the east. Crum followed through the door and turned toward the west. Hearing footsteps, Crum fired into the southwest corner to keep Whitman from bursting around the corner and shooting him. Martinez, meanwhile, rounded one corner, then, more slowly, turned onto the north side of the walkway.

Fifty feet away from him, in the northwest corner, crouched Whitman, his eyes riveted on the corner that Crum was about to turn. Martinez poured six pistol shots into Whitman's left side, arms and legs. McCoy moved up, blasted Whitman with a shotgun. Martinez, noting that the sniper's gun "was still flopping," grabbed the shotgun and, blasted Whitman again. As an autopsy showed, the shotgun pellets did it: one pierced Whitman's heart, another his brain. Crum grabbed a green towel from Whitman's foot locker, waved it above the railing to signal ceasefire. At 1:24 p.m., 96 murderous minutes after his first fusillade from the tower, Charlie Whitman was dead."

In the aftermath, an autopsy showed that Whitman had a pecan-size brain tumor, or astrocytoma, in the hypothalamus region. The pathologist, however, did not believe it could have been the cause of the headaches or the "psychic behavior." They also found a number of Dexedrine tablets in Whitman's possession—stimulants known as "goofballs" —but physicians were not able to detect signs that he had taken any before he died.

Here is a link to the entire Time article, "Madman in the Tower."

Another Way to Look at JFK

John Kennedy continues to fascinate us even though it's been over four decades since his assassination. One of the guessing games that's been played during that time is the "what-if?" about what would have happened had JFK lived. The rosiest version, of course, is that a Kennedy as a survivor never gets us bogged down in Vietnam and, because we aren't disillusioned by his death and Vietnam, then even Watergate wouldn't have happened.

While this is all valid conjecture, the last decade has seen a lot of blemishes added to the JFK mystique. And that leads to a book project known as WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT: THE IMPEACHMENT AND TRIAL OF JOHN F. KENNEDY. It's a project I've been working on for several years now with alternative history novelist Harry Turtledove. We're both Democrats, so it's not a political attack piece, but we've come to the conclusion that if Kennedy had been shot at in Dallas and the gunman (gunmen?) had missed, then a chain of events would have been set in motion that would have made Kennedy the first president to face impeachment since Andrew Johnson -- instead of Richard Nixon who had the honor in our reality.

It's a controversial tale, but there's a web-site devoted to this concept now where Harry and I propose to post the first sections of the book piece-by-piece. If it generates a following and some (potential) controversy, then we'll probably get a book deal to finish it. If it doesn't, well, that's the way it breaks, and we'll get on with our lives.

You can CLICK HERE to check it out, or on the BANNER ABOVE.

Here's the INSTANT HISTORY connection. We've made the two lead characters reporters who are the Kennedy year's equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein. New installments will be posted weekly.