Killing Kennedy

vibrant, youthful countenance the nation is used to seeing.
    JFK’s face is puffy from his chronic hypothyroidism. He wears a crisp blue suit, blue tie, and starched white shirt, though the television audience can see him only in black and white. It is 7:00 P.M. in Washington, D.C.
    This broadcast from the White House is quite the opposite of Jackie’s lighthearted tour of just ten months earlier. John Fitzgerald Kennedy must make the most powerful speech of his life. He does not smile. His face is stern. There is menace in his eyes. He is not optimistic, nor even hopeful. His words come out angrily, with a vehemence that shocks some viewers. Kennedy speaks the words of a man who has been bent until he will bend no more. And now he’s fighting back.
    “Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere.”
    Here the president pauses, letting the words sink in. He then recounts Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko’s visit to his office the previous Thursday, quotes Gromyko on the subject of missiles in Cuba—and then calls Gromyko a liar, for all the world to hear.
    “The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: Aggressive conduct, if allowed to grow unchecked and unchallenged, ultimately leads to war. This nation is opposed to war. We are also true to our word. Our unswerving objective, therefore, must be to prevent the use of these missiles against this or any other country and to secure their withdrawal or elimination from the Western Hemisphere.”
    The president’s cadence is quicker now, as he grows angrier and angrier. The word Cuba comes out as Cuber .
    After his speech is done, the president will enjoy a quiet dinner upstairs with Jackie, Ethel, Bobby, and a handful of invited guests. Watching the speech, the president’s dinner guests—among them designer Oleg Cassini and Jackie’s sister, Lee Radziwill—are stunned to learn that their dinner will not be the typical easygoing White House gathering. Even though they will sip French wine in the newly redecorated Oval Room, on the second floor, and JFK, with his usual understated style, will play the part of the congenial host, the tension at the dinner table will be something they will remember for the rest of their lives.
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    Thirteen hundred miles away, in Dallas, Texas, Lee Harvey Oswald is listening to Kennedy’s speech. Unlike the majority of his peers, Oswald believes that the Soviets have every right to be in Cuba. From his perspective, the Russians must protect Castro’s people against terrorist behavior by the United States. Oswald is firmly convinced that President Kennedy is putting the world on the brink of nuclear war by taking such an aggressive stance against the Soviets. To him, JFK is the villain.
    Oswald finalized his move from Forth Worth to Dallas earlier in the month and rented a P.O. box, number 2915, at the post office on the corner of Bryan and North Ervay Street. A few weeks before that, Oswald found a job at the firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall, as a photographic trainee. Amazingly, the firm has a contract with the U.S. Army Map Service that involves highly classified photographs taken by the U-2 spy planes flying over Cuba. It is Marina Oswald’s Russian friend George de Mohrenschildt who arranged for Oswald to be hired there. If the FBI, in all its zeal to stop the spread of communism, is concerned that a former Soviet defector has access to such top secret U-2 data at the peak of cold war tension, it’s not proving it by paying attention to his case.
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    On television, the president is about to throw down the gauntlet. “Acting, therefore, in the defense of our own security and of the entire Western Hemisphere, and under the authority entrusted me by the Constitution as endorsed by the resolution of Congress, I have directed that the following initial steps be taken immediately.”
    Then, after months of being diplomatic and appearing weak in Soviet eyes, the president shows his true mettle. JFK promises to “quarantine” Cuba, using the might of the U.S. Navy to prevent any Soviet vessel from entering Cuban waters. He declares that he is prepared to use military might in the form of an invasion, if necessary. He states unequivocally that any missile launched by the