Let all our neighbors know that we shall
join with them to oppose aggression or subversion
anywhere in the Americas.
And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to
remain the master of its own house.
My fellow citizens of the world,
ask not what America will do for you,
but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
I'm 91 years old now, and it's been
60 years this year.
There are a few of us left.
But very few.
I think about the event as it happened.
And I go right back to the moment that it happened.
I mean, it's there.
It's like a movie, run through my brain.
I was a Secret Service agent that protected the
President of the United States and his wife and family.
And I was assigned to protect Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.
First ladies previous to Mrs. Kennedy had done things
like go shopping, watch ballet,
play canasta, a card game,
and that's about the most activities the agents had
that were with those ladies.
And that's not what I aspired to.
I wanted to be where the action was.
And I did not think it would be with Mrs. Kennedy.
I was really mistaken in that belief,
it turned out.
It was very unusual for her
to participate in anything political.
She didn't like politics.
She told me that she thought
she would go on this trip to Texas.
She wanted to do everything she could to help President Kennedy
get re-elected in 1964.
They wanted to get out in front early.
Freedom, freedom, freedom.
Louder! Louder!
Freedom!
Louder!
Freedom! Freedom! Freedom!
The whole trip brings back memories.
I can remember everything pretty much in detail.
It was like a dream come true for me.
When I first joined the Secret Service,
this is what I wanted to do.
My code name was Debut.
I think that was just because I was so young.
Clint, his code name was Dazzle.
He knew Mrs. Kennedy like the back of his hand,
and there were just two of us assigned to her at that time.
We did everything together.
We began to think alike.
Mrs. Kennedy is proving an able campaigner as
she charms the crowds with her smile,
handshakes and pleasantries.
Everybody wanted to see Jackie.
Chanting "Jackie, Jackie, Jackie."
They were like a movie star couple really.
I think he kind of thrived on that.
When we got to Fort Worth that night, it was 11:00.
Still had a large crowd outside the hotel.
We were all in a good mood and felt that there was no sign of
animosity or anything like that.
570 Radio in Fort Worth, WBAP.
Here is Morning Edition,
complete news and weather coverage,
combining authoritative sources of WBAP and ABC,
brought to you by your 30 conveniently located
Buddies Supermarkets.
Good morning everyone.
President and Mrs. Kennedy arrived in Fort Worth from
Houston late last night to an enthusiastic reception from
huge crowds, and spent the night in suite 850
at Hotel Texas downtown.
Thousands gathered around the presidential hotel
in Fort Worth this morning in drizzling rain.
Many starting nearly three hours before the Kennedys
were to come out.
After all, it was Mrs. Kennedy's
first trip to Texas,
and Texans like to make big impressions.
This is Sid Davis with the presidential party, Texas.
I was with Westinghouse Broadcasting Company
as a White House correspondent,
and I covered Kennedy wherever he went.
When the Dallas trip was announced,
we were excited at the fact that it would be a
good political trip because we knew that Texas was not
a Kennedy town or state.
So, there was some trepidation on the part of the press and
what kind of a reception Kennedy would get.
Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States.
He was inspirational.
Even if you didn't agree with him,
you couldn't help but like him.
You know, "we shall go to the moon in this decade and return
the astronauts safely to Earth."
And everybody said, "he's nuts, he's crazy."
Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain?
Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon!
We choose to go to the moon...
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and
do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Talk about being a gambler?
This guy had what the Spanish would call cajones,
you know?
There was a breakfast that morning,
and I think there were about 2,000 or more people there.
And President Kennedy really wanted Jackie to be seen
by everybody in Texas.
Texas was such an important state.
He felt that with Jackie along, he would do better.
As you may have noticed,
Mrs. Kennedy did not enter with the President.
So far, we have no indication of where she may be,
and I can tell you from where we are standing,
there are quite a few ladies who appear to be
quite disappointed that Mrs. Kennedy is not here.
Now, Mrs. Kennedy had indicated that she was
not planning to go to this breakfast.
And so, I went to Mrs. Kennedy's room
and she was preparing to leave the hotel.
Quite a few people in the ballroom are
watching the maitre-d.
He's the short man that's walking back and forth
behind the head table.
Now he's pouring coffee.
As he moves down the line,
he did not stop at Mrs. Kennedy's place.
Then the phone rang,
and it was the agent who was with the President
down at the breakfast.
He said, "Clint, the President wants you to
bring Mrs. Kennedy down here."
I said, "Oh, she's not planning to go to that breakfast at all."
He said, "Clint, you didn't get the message.
The President says, bring Mrs. Kennedy down here now."
I said, "Okay, I got the message."
The door opened, we walked in,
and the place absolutely erupted.
When she walked into the room,
the crowd just got out of its chairs and started cheering.
She was dressed in this two-piece suit,
and I'm not a fashion expert, so I said to one of the
lady reporters, I said, "Is that pink?"
She said, "Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't be caught dead in pink."
I said, "Shoot, excuse me.
What do you call it?"
She said, "You can call it strawberry or raspberry."
And I called it raspberry.
Ladies and gentlemen, two years ago
I introduced myself in Paris by saying that I was the man
who had accompanied Mrs. Kennedy to Paris.
I'm getting somewhat that same sensation
as I travel around Texas.
Nobody wonders what Lyndon and I wear.
She'd been through a terrible period
the previous four months.
Her baby, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy,
died in August, and so she was getting over that.
This was her first visit out of the White House in the public.
And so, it was an uplifting thing for people to see her
out and smiling.
Prior to that you'd never see them
hug or kiss or hold hands in public.
From that point on, they didn't care who was there.
They'd hold hands, they'd hug.
And it changed their relationship.
It really changed everything.
I'd never seen her happier than
she was that morning.
Mr. President, we know that you don't wear a hat.
.
Couldn't let you leave Fort Worth without
providing you with some protection against the rain.
.
The time we were ready to leave Fort Worth that
morning, we drove out to Carswell Air Force Base,
and we got in Air Force One to fly to Dallas.
At this moment three special jetliners are supposed
to be in the air between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Right now, the eyes of Texas
and the nation are focused on Dallas.
The day we left, we had a briefing,
and everybody was given their assignments and
what they would be doing.
And this was the first I learned that Dallas
had a moniker, the City of Hate.
I, I never knew, had never thought anything about that.
Dallas to me was big money.
You had the Hunt brothers, oil country,
home of the big rich.
I was surprised to hear this.
I knew nothing about it being a bad political environment.
Dallas Police Chief, Jesse Curry,
has told the citizens and visitors that nothing must
occur that would be disrespectful or degrading
to the President.
But there are those opposition signs,
and we see in brilliant evidence right now,
a Texas flag and a huge Confederate flag are flying.
We undoubtedly will have a few pickets,
as you have everywhere in the United States.
There will probably be a few of the radical right wing.
Possibly a few of the radical left wing.
But sincerely, we anticipate no trouble.
Being a young 19-year-old boy from Dallas,
I never had seen a presidential motorcade.
Um, I didn't know what to expect.
I had no idea.
Uh, my number one thing was you go into work and
doing what you had to do, and get home.
Well, that Friday felt like any other Friday morning.
I drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work, because
Lee did not own a car.
We listened to the radio.
Lee wasn't a big talker.
He would not initiate a conversation.
The thing he would talk most about was his child.
And I noticed a package on the backseat.
And I just glanced at it, I didn't look at it.
I said, "What's in the package, Lee?"
And he says, "Curtain rods."
Then we got to work at Texas School Book Depository.
And Lee gets out, gets the package,
and he walked off.
We always walked together, but not this morning.
And it never dawned on me anything was different.
When we arrived at Love Field,
there was a huge crowd waiting to see the President.
I put the boys in their Sunday best clothes,
and we both dressed up.
We were excited.
We said we were taking the children,
but I think we were more interested in seeing
the President and First Lady than, than uh, the kids.
They didn't know who they were.
Gayle and myself were glad to be there.
It's not an everyday event that
the President of the United States comes to Dallas, Texas.
It looked like the best place to be was out at Love Field
as the plane came in.
And here comes the presidential plane,
Air Force number one.
The official greeting party is consisting of
the Vice President Lyndon Johnson,
and Mrs. Johnson of course.
At the airport in Love Field on arrival,
there's large crowds.
President Kennedy, he just headed straight for the fence
where the people were.
Mrs. Kennedy normally wouldn't do that.
But she went right along right behind him,
and so I accompanied her.
We knew that there was a group in Dallas that did not like or
did not agree with President Kennedy's position
on many things.
Now, how far they were willing to go for that,
I did not know, we did not know.
You never know what's in that crowd.
Who's in that crowd.
I mean, the crowd was pushing,
just surged around us and we weren't able to get any further.
I wasn't able to really get up close.
And Bill said, "I think we can probably get ahead of the
motorcade and get down where we can get maybe a closer look."
And now the President and First Lady
are retreating from the fence.
They're heading now for the official limousine,
where Governor Connally stands, waiting their arrival so that
they can make their way downtown.
Gotta get to the car.
Now, it had been raining lightly,
but it had stopped.
By the time we were ready to leave,
the word was "the top is to be off."
The President's insisted on having an open car,
was because he wanted to be felt
as close to the people as possible.
He wanted the people to feel there was never any barrier
between them and him.
We started to drive through the outskirts of Dallas.
And I was surveying the crowd, just scanning them to see
what was going on.
Everywhere that they could get to see President and
Mrs. Kennedy, they tried to get.
I jumped from my position on the follow up car,
and went to the rear bumper of the presidential vehicle,
and got up on top of there, to be as close to Mrs. Kennedy as
I could be, because I didn't know what to expect from any of
these people who were that close to her.
I was in the press bus,
'cause I could sit up front in the bus and see out.
There was something magical about this trip,
and I think it was Jackie, and the fact that he brought her.
I don't know, I uh...
I changed my opinion about Dallas and Texas.
It was not a cold city.
It made a big difference because Jackie was there.
I think the town really was very,
very welcoming to her.
It was a celebration, that they were getting a chance to see
this First Lady who'd never been to Dallas.
And, of course, it changed her life.
I have this sense of guilt.
I should have been able to do more than I did.
I wasn't fast enough.
I guess I wasn't faster than a speeding bullet.
It appears as though something has happened
in the motorcade route.
Something, I repeat, has happened
in the motorcade route.
The limousine is now traveling at a very high rate of speed,
Secret Service men standing up in the limousine.
Mrs. Kennedy was screaming,
"they've shot his head off. I love you, Jack."
It was at Dealey Plaza we saw the people trying
to escape the danger.
I saw women taking their shoes off,
running without heels.
I saw a father take his little boy,
place the boy on the ground,
and put his body on top of the boy.
We were one lane width away from him
when he was shot in the head.
I think my maternal instinct kicked in.
Never in my mind, when I got up that morning,
did I think that I would see something so horrific.
I was shouting up to the driver,
"Get us to the hospital, get us to the hospital."
Mrs. Kennedy was in shock,
with the President's head in her lap.
When we got to Parkland Hospital,
Mrs. Kennedy had a hold of his body,
and she would not let go.
I pleaded with her, I said,
"Please Mrs. Kennedy, let us help the President."
Got no response at all.
And then I realized, she wasn't going to let go.
So, I took my suit coat off, and covered up his back,
his head, shoulders and upper back,
and when I did that, she let go.
The latest unconfirmed report from
the emergency room is that he is still alive.
Texas Governor John Connally also was hit by the bullet.
We got to trauma room one.
I kind of got pushed in with the crowd,
right beside his shoes or feet.
I couldn't look at the President,
I, I was feeling faint.
I knew if I looked at him, I'd pass out.
And it was, I, I just, you can do this Paul.
That was a time, you know, you're needed more.
You've got to stay with it.
You've got to hang in there.
I heard a doctor shout, "Let me through, let me through",
and they're asking everybody to evacuate the room.
And it was about that time somebody came out and asked
for the, uh...
if anyone knew the President's blood type.
And Mrs. Kennedy kind of stood up and said,
"Do you mean he's alive?", and it was just utter silence.
My boss yelled at me,
"Clint, get a telephone,
open up a line to the White House,
let them know what's going on."
The operator said, "Mr. Hill, I'm sorry,
but Robert Kennedy wants to talk to you."
I said, "Okay, fine.
Mr. Attorney General, can I help you?"
He said, "Clint," he said, "What's going on down there?"
I said, "Both President Kennedy
and the Governor have been shot."
And he said, "Well, how bad is it?",
and so I just said, "Well, it's as bad as it could get",
and with that, he just hung up the phone.
Mrs. Kennedy, she knew.
As soon as he fell in her lap, I'm sure,
she knew that the President could not have survived and
was, in fact, dead.
This is Edwin Newman and the
NBC Newsroom in New York.
This information from Dallas.
President Kennedy was given the last Holy Rites of the
Roman Catholic Church today.
That was, of course, after he was shot down by a would-be
assassin while he was riding in the caravan through
downtown Dallas.
Two priests, who were with President Kennedy,
say he is dead of bullet wound.
This is the latest information we have from Dallas.
We will attempt now to get to station WBAP-TV...
What's your you feeling right now?
I really couldn't say.
Really.
Right now, I just don't know what to do.
I don't even know where to go, what to say.
There's nothing for me to say.
Yeah, it's my belief that the United States
lost its innocence on November 22nd, 1963.
The search now centers at the area near the
old Texas School Book Depository building,
and there is a possibility that the would-be assassin is still
inside that building.
When most people are running away,
that's when police officers are running in.
The plane which is carrying the President's body
in a bronze casket also has now-President Lyndon Johnson,
as well as Mrs. Kennedy.
She said, "let them see what they have done."
Captioned by Cotter Media Group.