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More at uh1.com. is

4:00

a different matter. I guess the salient fact there

4:02

is that he is pointing out that, you

4:05

know, within less than a day, that our

4:07

police have compiled this case against the man

4:09

they think is guilty of shooting the president.

4:11

Yes. So what do they know, at this

4:14

point, about Oswald's

4:16

movements before the assassination? Have they kind of

4:18

looked into that? Have they drawn up a

4:20

picture of what his movements might have been?

4:23

They have, of course. So this is the kind of picture they have.

4:26

They know that Oswald, who had previously spent time

4:28

in the Soviet Union, is married to a Russian

4:30

woman called Marina, and that

4:32

she lives in Irving, which

4:34

is kind of suburban metropolitan fringes of

4:37

Dallas. And she's with a Quaker, isn't

4:39

she? Called Ruth Payne. Who is very

4:41

interested in Russian. She's a Russian teacher.

4:43

Yes, exactly. That's how they become friends.

4:46

They know that Oswald usually

4:49

visited his wife in Irving at

4:52

the weekends, but very

4:54

unusually… Well, the only time, I

4:56

think… Exactly. Had visited her on

4:58

a Thursday… During the week. …had

5:00

left his rented accommodation in Oak

5:03

Cliff, Dallas, to go out to

5:05

Irving to see his wife.

5:08

They know, because she has told them,

5:10

that he left his wedding ring behind.

5:12

Again, it's a weird, isn't it? These

5:14

parallel stories. So Jackie taking her ring

5:16

off and leaving it on her dead

5:18

husband's finger. The symbolism of it all.

5:20

They know that he left early on

5:22

the Friday morning with a long package

5:25

wrapped up in brown paper to

5:27

get a lift from a neighbor called

5:29

Wesley Frasier into Dallas to work. And

5:32

then when Wesley Frasier asked Lee Harvey Oswald

5:34

what he is carrying, Lee

5:36

Harvey Oswald said, curtain rods. They

5:40

know that he arrived at the Texas Book Depository at 752

5:42

in the morning, which

5:44

is on the corner of Houston. And they're all overlooking

5:46

Dili Plaza, as we said. And

5:49

unusually, again, he

5:51

walked away from Wesley Frasier as

5:53

they walked away from the car

5:56

with his package. It kind of went

5:58

off to the Book Depository. Now,

8:00

for an experienced investigator like Captain Fritz

8:02

of the Dallas Police Department, he

8:05

knows that unless the circumstances

8:07

are very unusual, somebody who

8:10

has been falsely accused does not generally tell

8:12

small lies because it's not in their interest

8:14

to do so. Unless

8:16

you're trying to cover up something else in your

8:18

life, the chances are that

8:20

you will tell the truth because you know beyond

8:23

any doubt, because you know you didn't do it,

8:25

you know that the truth will exonerate you. Oswald

8:28

has already told two lies. He's lied about

8:30

whether or not he brought any curtain rods

8:33

to work. Of course, if they are

8:35

just curtain rods, what's the issue? Yeah, there is no

8:37

gain to him in lying about it. And

8:39

secondly, he has denied that he's ever

8:41

bought a gun. And then of course they say

8:44

to him, well, what about your revolver? Oh, yeah,

8:46

well, that's what I've done. And when they say

8:48

to him, the mail order gun, in the name

8:50

of A. Heidel, he denies anything about it. If

8:53

Oswald had bought the gun perfectly

8:56

innocently, if it's not the murder weapon,

8:58

if he had not shot Kennedy, there

9:00

is no reason again for

9:02

him to lie about this because of course gun

9:04

ownership in Texas is hardly unusual. So

9:07

the police that morning, Saturday morning, they

9:10

are in no doubt whatsoever that

9:12

Oswald is the man. And what about the

9:14

kind of the justice system? Are they convinced by

9:16

the evidence? Do they go public with it? Totally

9:18

convinced. The DA, Henry Wade, at one

9:20

o'clock that afternoon, he goes

9:22

to the press. So the press is still

9:24

there, by the way. Of course they are.

9:26

It's a really important point, this when we

9:28

get to Jack Ruby, the press is still

9:30

there. Great hordes of them in the police

9:32

headquarters in downtown Dallas. And it's fair to

9:34

say also that, of course, this is generating

9:37

international as well as merely American interest. And

9:39

that already, particularly in Europe and actually

9:42

particularly in France, I gather, all

9:44

kinds of conspiracy theories are starting to circulate

9:46

in a way that they're not openly

9:49

in America at this point. Yeah. And

9:51

lots and lots of people are saying conspiracy, the French papers,

9:53

for example. Don't forget, the United

9:55

States has had quite disabliging coverage in European

9:58

papers for a couple of years. of

10:00

civil rights. So there's been

10:02

a heavy emphasis in European papers on

10:05

the racism of the South, the

10:07

abuse of demonstrators, Martin Luther King

10:10

put in prison in Birmingham, all

10:12

of that kind of stuff. So

10:15

as soon as Kennedy is shot, a lot of

10:17

the European press say, Oh, America is crazy. And

10:19

it's full of crazy people and conspirators. So this

10:22

also is part of the context for it, that

10:24

they are aware that they have to present a

10:26

watertight case, because the

10:28

eyes of the world as well as of America are

10:30

all them. Absolutely. It's why they are so open with

10:33

the press, because it is so important to them that

10:36

there not be a hint of suspicion about this.

10:39

So one o'clock that afternoon, the district

10:41

attorney Henry Wade, he tells the press,

10:44

he says, you know, we have the suspect,

10:46

he's been charged, we expect a trial in

10:48

mid January, and I will be asking for

10:50

the death penalty. So about 15

10:53

minutes after that, Oswald's

10:55

mother Marguerite, and his

10:57

wife, Russian wife, Marina are shown in

10:59

to see his mother's a terrible woman, isn't

11:01

she? She is. Yeah, she's a bad mother,

11:04

I think it's fair to say, very, very

11:06

self centered. It's all about her very self

11:08

centered, and incredibly flaky. Marina, of

11:10

course, this very young Russian, who we

11:12

met in Minsk, who doesn't really speak

11:14

English, she is totally out of her

11:17

depth and bewildered by the whole thing.

11:19

But here is what is really interesting.

11:22

They go in and they have this very desultory

11:24

conversation. He asks about the kids

11:26

and stuff like this. Marina, at

11:29

this point, believes her husband

11:31

is guilty because he's not protesting. Because

11:34

she knows him. She

11:36

knows what a spiky,

11:38

difficult, anti authority, sort

11:41

of aggressive man Lee Oswald

11:43

is. Yeah. And when she

11:45

sees him sullen all

11:47

of this, she thinks this is very

11:50

weird. She knows if he were innocent, he

11:52

would be shouting and

11:54

roaring about his rights and protesting and having

11:56

to be dragged in and out and all

11:58

of this thing. And when she's sees

12:00

him react like this, she thinks he's guilty.

12:02

Now the other person who comes along that

12:04

afternoon is his brother, Robert. Robert,

12:08

similarly, finds Lee's demeanor

12:11

very peculiar. He is disturbed by it

12:13

because he says that his brother is

12:15

like a robot just answering questions mechanically,

12:18

not showing any emotion, you know, not doing what Robert

12:20

hoped he would be doing, which is saying they've got

12:22

the wrong man, you've got to get me out of

12:24

here, you've got to get me a lawyer. It's

12:27

as though Lee's not really interested.

12:30

The president of the Dallas Bar Association comes along

12:32

and he says, do you want

12:34

my help in finding you a lawyer? People are

12:36

actually bending over backwards to try and make sure

12:38

this all runs properly. He too

12:40

says, I found Lee Hoffe-Oswald very calm,

12:42

not frightened, not angry,

12:45

just impassive, unreadable. And also he just wants

12:47

this weird lawyer in New York, doesn't he?

12:49

John App. Yes, he keeps saying I need

12:51

this guy App, so he's read about a

12:54

sort of civil liberties lawyer. And

12:56

the Dallas people say, well, we'll get you a good lawyer down

12:58

here, you know, we'll find you a lawyer. No,

13:00

no, no, I must have this guy. By

13:03

evening, there were two more developments in

13:05

the case, both of which

13:07

seem to the police to confirm what they already believe.

13:11

One is they have found a money

13:13

order for the rifle, the

13:15

money order that Mr. Heidel used

13:18

to buy it from Chicago and

13:20

the money order handwriting, the analysis

13:22

shows this is Lee Harvey Oswald's

13:24

handwriting. Secondly, they find

13:26

a photograph of Lee Harvey

13:28

Oswald in the backyard of

13:31

his home with a rifle and

13:33

two communist papers. And

13:36

it seems to be the same rifle. And

13:39

they showed the photograph to Oswald and

13:41

Oswald says, that's not my face. It's

13:44

a fake face. They've put somebody else's face

13:47

on top of my body. And now

13:49

there's been lots of discussion about this ever since

13:51

this features in Oliver Stone's film JFK. I

13:53

think the general consensus now is that this is

13:55

not a fake photograph has been very, very detailed

13:58

analysis of it in the last few which

14:01

suggests that it is actually an

14:03

authentic photograph. It doesn't mean that he did it, by

14:05

the way. But this is clearly his defense, isn't it?

14:07

The idea that he's being set up. So when he'd

14:10

been taken out to the press conference, he'd said, I'm

14:12

a patsy. And this again is

14:14

a phrase that will appear in one of

14:16

the Stones film JFK and so on. This

14:20

is what he's saying. He's being framed, he's being set up.

14:22

Well, he explicitly says in the patsy thing, he says, they're

14:24

framing me because I didn't know I spent time in the

14:26

Soviet Union, which he did, which we will come to later

14:28

on in this series. So the

14:30

police, as far as they're concerned, there is no doubt in

14:32

their mind now. He spends one

14:34

more night in custody, the night of Saturday, the 23rd

14:36

of November. Of course, what

14:38

he doesn't know, what nobody knows, is that this is

14:40

the last night of his life. Overnight,

14:44

the police have a series of

14:46

death threats against Lee Harvey Oswald.

14:48

That is standard again. That is

14:50

not unusual. That is perfectly normal

14:52

in this circumstance. And

14:55

they have already decided, obviously, they're

14:58

going to transfer him to the county jail.

15:00

They're not going to keep him police headquarters

15:02

for the next kind of two months or something.

15:05

But they know they will have to do

15:07

it with absolutely maximum security. They're not naive.

15:10

They're not idiots. So at 9

15:12

o'clock, the chief of police actually tells his

15:14

subordinates, 9 o'clock on Sunday morning, he

15:16

tells his subordinates, I want an armored truck.

15:20

I will go personally to lead the kind of

15:22

caravan of vehicles. I want police

15:24

reinforcements. I want motorbikes in case there

15:26

are crowds trying to storm the truck

15:28

and get Oswald out and lynch him.

15:30

I also want, he says,

15:33

I want the police to do an absolutely thorough

15:35

search of the basement of the building. We'll

15:37

be bringing him out from the basement onto this ramp and

15:39

loading him onto the truck. You

15:41

know, then nothing at all can go wrong.

15:45

But the assumption is that the police station itself

15:48

is secure, right? Yeah, I think so. That

15:50

no one is likely to get into the

15:53

police station who isn't a member of the

15:55

police. Well, they have security. I mean, they're not

15:57

going to be letting lots of people come in. allow

16:01

for is the fact that the actual

16:03

arrangements around the transfer will be so

16:05

chaotic that for a single

16:07

moment they will take their eyes off this

16:09

ramp for Lee Harvey Oswald.

16:11

That will be a fatal moment. Because of course

16:14

the gentleman that we've already mentioned, Jack Ruby, he

16:17

is very very upset about the

16:19

Kennedys. He's very very traumatized isn't

16:22

it? By the notion that if

16:25

Oswald pleads not guilty

16:27

that Jackie Kennedy might be sub-penered

16:29

and have to come to Dallas.

16:32

And he's very upset about the thought of what this would

16:35

do to her, emotional state and what

16:37

it would do to the children. And he's working

16:39

himself up into a lather about this. So

16:41

Jack Ruby is obviously, he's not the only person

16:44

in America, in Texas, or indeed in Dallas,

16:46

who has been deeply affected by

16:48

President Kennedy's death. And

16:51

he's not the only erratic and eccentric

16:53

person. But he's an

16:55

important, erratic and eccentric person for reasons

16:57

that obviously everybody knows. He

16:59

has spent the whole of Saturday in this sort of what

17:02

Vincent Bugl people

17:47

do. Jack Ruby

17:50

has Mafia links and

17:52

has been employed by Organized Crime to

17:54

eliminate Lee Harvey Oswald so that he

17:56

won't talk. I mean there

17:58

are a couple of issues here. One is

18:00

why would you allow Lee Hoviswold

18:03

to spend days, hours and hours

18:05

with Fritz being interrogated? Yeah, being

18:07

interrogated. But secondly, it would seem

18:10

an implausible choice of assassin to

18:12

eliminate the assassin. To

18:14

have your assassin spend the weekend going

18:17

around the city crying, ringing

18:19

people up, talking to everybody about what

18:21

he's going to do. Yeah. So

18:23

as you say, he's obsessed by this thing

18:26

about the trial. He reads

18:28

a report in the Dallas

18:30

Times Herald that says

18:32

there is a possibility if the trial is held in

18:35

Dallas that Jackie Kennedy will have to come back to

18:37

Dallas in due course to testify as a witness. He

18:39

is horrified by this. This is awful. But

18:41

he also sees an open letter, a very kind of,

18:44

I think it's pretty moving. Some people I

18:46

suppose might find it more kish. I don't. I

18:49

think it's very, very moving. An open

18:51

letter from a Dallas resident to Caroline

18:53

Kennedy, Kennedy's daughter, from a guy

18:55

who says, I took my two daughters

18:57

out of school, so they would see your mommy

18:59

and daddy when they visited Dallas. And he says,

19:02

we saw them and they looked so happy. And

19:05

your daddy looked at my youngest and eldest daughter

19:07

and he waved to them. And I thought of

19:09

you. And I thought, what a

19:11

lovely guy he obviously was. And

19:13

then he says, you know, it's such a terrible thing that

19:16

has happened to you. But I

19:18

wish we could help you. You'll have

19:20

so many friends, though. God loves you.

19:22

God loves little girls. You can absolutely

19:24

see how this would hit someone as

19:26

emotional and overwrought as Ruby in

19:28

the solar plexus. Exactly. Ruby

19:30

reads this letter, it's published as an open letter. The

19:33

kind of thing, Tom, that as we know is

19:36

often published in the wake of tragedies. He

19:38

reads this letter, he

19:40

cracks. And by his

19:43

own account, this is the

19:45

moment he thinks, I am a Jew. And

19:47

we have been downtrodden and people say we

19:49

are weak and all this. Because it's a

19:51

Jew who had written that letter that had

19:54

been printed in the Dallas newspaper. Saying that

19:56

Kennedy was a traitor. That Kennedy

19:58

was a traitor. And so he wants to... to stand

20:00

up and show that Jews are tough,

20:02

is it? What's the phrase he uses? Jews

20:04

have guts. That's what he says. I want

20:07

to show the world that a Jew has

20:09

guts. However, before

20:12

Jack Ruby shows the world that he

20:14

has guts, he has something even more

20:16

pressing to do. He has

20:18

to go into town to the Western

20:20

Union office because he needs to

20:23

send one of his strippers some money. And

20:25

so that I think is where we should

20:28

leave him on that exciting cliffhanger. How

20:30

big's the queue gonna be? Is he gonna get there? Is

20:32

he gonna be able to do it in time? I think

20:34

it reflects well on him. It's

20:37

quite a paternalistic employer, isn't he? He is.

20:39

Yeah. And just to kind of... we haven't

20:41

had much English engagement in this and we're

20:43

a patriotic podcaster, just to mention that one

20:45

of his strippers is actually English. So... Yeah,

20:47

Kay Coleman I think it was, wasn't it?

20:49

Yeah. So anyway, this is By the Bye.

20:51

Well, that's nice, Tom. Nice to have an

20:53

English element to the story. So, the

20:56

tension is building. Will

20:58

Jack Ruby get the money off in time?

21:00

Will he get to the police station in

21:02

time? What is going to happen? We

21:05

will reveal all after the break.

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Lawrenceburg, Indiana. This

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shopify.com/ offer23. Hello,

22:47

welcome back to The Rest is History. It is 11.17

22:49

on the 23rd of November, 1963. And

22:56

on Main Street, Dallas, Jack

22:58

Ruby is filling out a

23:01

Western Union money order for

23:03

a stripper. Yes. Two

23:05

minutes later, back in the police station,

23:07

a handcuffed Lee

23:10

Harvey Oswald is being taken by

23:12

his police escort down an

23:14

elevator to the basement.

23:17

Dominic, what happens next?

23:20

Right. So the basement has been

23:23

searched, totally searched. There

23:25

are 70 policemen stationed in the

23:27

basement for security. The

23:30

plan however has changed. The original plan was

23:32

they would take Oswald to the county jail

23:34

in an armored truck. The plan now is

23:37

that the armored truck will attract so much

23:39

attention that they will actually take him in

23:42

an unmarked police car and they will use

23:44

the armored truck and the cavalcade as a

23:46

kind of decoy. It's actually, Tom, I have

23:48

to say, a pretty good

23:50

plan given the amount of attention that

23:52

will be paid to the armored truck. So

23:54

they're taking Oswald down in the elevator and then they'll

23:56

lead him through the office and he

23:59

will be taken. towards the basement

24:01

garage and he'll be loaded into the

24:03

car. The basement is

24:05

full of reporters, television cameras, cameramen,

24:08

photographers, all of this stuff. So

24:10

the place is rammed actually. Meanwhile,

24:13

as you say, a very short walk away

24:15

on Main Street, Jack Ruby

24:18

has got to the front of the queue at

24:20

the Western Union office. There was one

24:22

person ahead of him in the queue. Had

24:25

there been more, he would

24:27

not have been there in time. This

24:30

is a problem, I think, if you believe that

24:32

Jack Ruby is a hired, paid,

24:35

professional assassin. But who

24:37

was that person, Dominic, ahead of him in

24:39

the queue? Well, I mean, Tom, I don't...

24:42

Come on, you've got to get on top of

24:44

the case. I don't know, but I think the

24:46

queue would be... The line, as our American listeners

24:48

would call it, is surely a hard

24:50

thing to fix, right? I mean, you don't know who's

24:52

going to be standing there in the line. Anyway...

24:55

But if it's a mafia boss or it's

24:58

someone from the X-Files or a Cuban exile, I

25:00

mean, you know. Right,

25:02

right. So at

25:05

11.19, as you said, Oswald is in the

25:07

elevator going down to the basement. At

25:10

11.20, the police are moving the

25:12

cars and the trucks into position outside the

25:14

basement garage at the end of this ramp.

25:18

Now, because of the change

25:20

of plan, there's just a bit of

25:22

faffing around with the trucks and the

25:25

cars. If you're really fascinated by this

25:27

truck-based faffing, you can read

25:29

probably thousands of websites about it.

25:32

But basically, they're reversing some cars,

25:34

moving others. It's a slight bit

25:37

of confusion, not massive confusion, though.

25:39

Truck-based faffing. But they are,

25:41

you know, they are distracted. In

25:44

that sense of distraction, Jack Ruby,

25:47

who has just left the Western Union office,

25:49

who's basically walking past the Dallas police

25:52

headquarters, as he has done

25:54

so many times with his corned beef sandwiches and

25:56

celery tonics, he walks

25:58

up the ramp and... into the

26:00

basement. And I think there is

26:02

a claim that one person saw him and shouted,

26:04

Oh, stop, but it was too late. He

26:06

was in at the same moment

26:09

that he walks into the basement. The

26:11

elevator doors open and Lee

26:13

Harvey Oswald and his guards, he's

26:15

flanked by two detectives, Detective Lavell

26:18

and Detective Graves. They step

26:20

out of the elevator into the jail

26:22

office. They move past the desks into

26:24

the garage. They're blinded temporarily by the

26:26

TV lights that have been set up.

26:28

And as they come into view, the

26:30

press surge towards them. And

26:33

one of the press, a guy called

26:35

Ike Papas from CBS, they're all shouting

26:37

Mr Oswald, Mr Oswald. And he shouts,

26:40

do you have anything to say in your defense?

26:43

And it is at that moment that

26:45

a man lunges out

26:47

of the crowd, holding a

26:49

gun in his right hand. I mean, everybody

26:52

who's ever had a smidgen of interest

26:54

in this story will have seen the clip, I'm

26:57

sure. Right away, multiple policemen

26:59

see that it is Jack Ruby. Somebody shouts,

27:01

Jack, you son of a bitch, don't do

27:03

it. And Ruby

27:06

fires, he fires a shot directly

27:08

into Lee Harvey Oswald's stomach. Then

27:11

the police pile on him. Right

27:13

away. I mean, Ruby obviously doesn't deny it. Well, he'd

27:15

be hard pressed here, wouldn't he? He'd

27:18

be very hard pressed. I mean, he's literally just

27:20

shot in front of the full glare of the

27:22

world's media. The world's fresh. Yes,

27:25

he has. And he says, I hope I killed that

27:27

son of a bitch. It'll save everybody a lot of

27:29

trouble. Which I mean, is very ironic, because he's now

27:32

absolutely set people down at holes at session

27:34

and rabbit holes with that. He has indeed.

27:36

So they drag Lee Harvey Oswald's body back

27:38

into the jail office. And a

27:40

detective, I think his name is Combust is over

27:42

him. Oswald is losing

27:45

blood very rapidly. And the guy says to

27:47

Oswald, is there anything you want

27:49

to tell me? Is there anything you want to say now? And

27:51

he doesn't say a word and then he

27:54

passes out. Now, as with

27:56

the Kennedy assassination, they

27:58

move incredibly quickly. to

28:00

get Oswald to Parkland Hospital. He is there

28:02

within minutes. And they think about taking

28:04

him into trauma room one, don't they? And then they

28:07

think that would be disrespectful. They do. Because that's where

28:09

Kennedy had been taken. So they move him into trauma

28:11

room two. But two of the same doctors

28:14

who had worked on Kennedy also

28:16

work on Oswald. And they are, of course, very

28:18

conscious of the irony of this. Of course. But

28:20

they're doing their job professionally. It's obvious, by the

28:23

way, there is a moment when they think he

28:25

might pull through. Because his brother Robert, he comes

28:27

and a doctor comes out and says he'll be

28:29

all right. Yeah. But the issue

28:31

is he's lost so much blood. Now,

28:33

this is a story in which iron is a part of what iron

28:35

is. At the very moment that

28:37

Oswald is bleeding to death in trauma

28:39

room two, in

28:42

the White House in Washington, Jacqueline

28:44

Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and the two

28:46

children are just being shown into

28:48

the East Room of the White House to see

28:51

John F. Kennedy's body lying in state. So

28:53

this is before Tom, it will be moved to

28:55

the rotunda of the Capitol for the

28:58

sort of for the public to pay their respects. So

29:00

this is a private moment. Jackie

29:02

gives him two farewell letters from the

29:04

children. They'd all had tie clips

29:06

made with PT 109, which was the torpedo

29:08

boat that had been sunk by the Japanese

29:11

in the Second World War, and which had

29:13

given him, you know, the terrible damage to

29:15

his spine that necessitated the wearing of the

29:17

corset. Exactly. So they put that

29:19

in, and then they closed the casket. Oswald

29:22

back at the hospital, they're working desperately

29:24

on him. But at 1.07pm, that's two

29:26

days and seven minutes after John F.

29:29

Kennedy was declared dead, Lee

29:31

Harvey Oswald is declared dead.

29:33

And meanwhile, is Ruby, is the interrogation already beginning?

29:35

Yes, they've been interrogating Ruby, and he's basically said

29:37

the whole thing. I mean, he's only got one

29:39

thing to say, and he said it. So

29:42

he has said, when I saw Mrs.

29:44

Kennedy was going to have to appear for a trial, I

29:46

thought to myself, why should she have to go through this

29:48

ordeal for this no good son of a bitch? I'd read

29:50

about that letter to little Caroline. I had been to the

29:52

Western Union Office to send a telegram. I had to do

29:54

it. I had to show the world that a Jew has

29:57

guts. And later on, he says the same thing to the

29:59

FBI. But, Dominic, I think the thing

30:01

he says that kind of

30:03

basically sums up not just his motivation,

30:05

but Oswald's, and I suppose in a sense,

30:07

Kennedy's as well. I wanted to be

30:09

something, something better than anyone else.

30:13

That sense of wanting to make a mark. Perhaps.

30:16

It's true of all three men in very

30:18

different ways. Yeah, that's a nice point, actually,

30:20

Tom. So John F. Kennedy had

30:22

been raised by his father to be so competitive

30:24

and to believe that he could make a mark

30:26

on the world as, of course, he did. You

30:29

know, he's a bright guy. He has

30:31

a sense of service and

30:33

of, you know, leaving an imprint on

30:35

society. Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald,

30:38

in their different ways, are very damaged

30:40

men. They have none of Kennedy's assurance,

30:42

his brains, his charisma, his charm. Contact,

30:45

his background. Yeah, and they have none of his

30:47

other advantages, you're absolutely right. And

30:49

these are two men who have totally failed to make a

30:51

mark and are very conscious of it. And now they do.

30:54

I mean, most of us, Tom, learn to live

30:56

with the fact that we won't be ranked among the great

30:58

men of history. Yeah. But both Jack Ruby

31:00

and Lee Harvey Oswald, they've made them up. Here we

31:02

are talking about them. They have made their mark, but

31:04

they were men who were conscious of their own failure,

31:06

I think, right up to the last

31:08

moments of their lives. So

31:12

that is a terrible blow for the Dallas

31:14

Police Department. I mean, it is a blow

31:16

to the public reputation from which they arguably

31:18

never ever recovered. I mean, it

31:20

must be humiliating for people associated with law enforcement

31:22

in Dallas. That the one

31:25

place in that city, this huge booming

31:28

Texan city, the one place that everybody

31:30

visits is a reminder of

31:32

their failure. That first of all, they didn't protect

31:34

the president, not that there's much they could have

31:36

done, to be fair. And secondly, that the

31:38

assassin was self shot in their

31:41

custody. Yeah. Two days

31:43

later. I think having read Parkland,

31:45

that the police do actually come out of it

31:47

incredibly well. I mean, my sense was that they

31:49

were all corrupt,

31:52

hopeless, incompetent, the fake sense that I

31:54

had. But actually, I was impressed

31:57

with the investigation. I'll

32:00

tell you the other thing I was impressed by was the

32:02

sheer range of names that the police officers have. I

32:05

very much enjoyed Deputy Chief Plepkin. And

32:07

then there's special agent Floyd Boring.

32:10

And one thing the episode certainly wasn't

32:12

was Boring. Well, that's true. So I

32:14

just throw that out. Yeah. Well, there's

32:17

definitely this quality about this whole story,

32:19

Tom, of the great American novel, isn't

32:21

there? Yeah, there really is. Of a

32:23

huge panoramic range of people with ludicrous

32:25

names. You wouldn't believe it. And

32:28

of course, lots of people don't. No, they

32:30

don't. But Dominic, before we come to the

32:32

theories about what happened, whether there was a

32:34

conspiracy, if there was a conspiracy,

32:37

who might have been behind it? Let's

32:39

round off the narrative of these four

32:41

terrible days. So we're now on the

32:43

25th of November. This is the day

32:45

that is scheduled for JFK's funeral, but it's

32:47

also going to be a day of two

32:49

other funerals, isn't it? It is. And this

32:51

was, of course, the day, Tom. It

32:54

was kind of, you know, marked, ringed in Kennedy's

32:57

diary because they wanted to be back for

33:00

their son, John Junior's birthday. They actually have

33:02

the birthday party. I mean, it's an extraordinary

33:04

detail, very human detail that they still have

33:06

the birthday party because they feel they don't

33:08

want to deny the little boy. It's

33:11

part of they want to give him a sense of normality. So

33:13

Kennedy's funeral was held in St. Matthew's Cathedral, the

33:16

Catholic Cathedral in Washington. And then, of course, he

33:18

was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. And, Donna, just

33:20

to mention, before this, there had also been a

33:22

service in the White House, which was a Catholic

33:24

service. And this was the first ever Catholic service

33:27

to be held in the White House. Is that

33:29

right? The first Catholic service? We talked last

33:31

week, didn't we, about this sense of controversy

33:33

about the first Catholic president? I mean,

33:35

no one's really questioning it. No

33:38

one's complaining about that now. No one's complaining

33:40

about it now. So both the Kennedy family

33:42

and the Johnson family march in the procession,

33:45

as do 22 international presidents, 10 prime

33:47

ministers, kings, queens,

33:49

emperors. Tom, you were very

33:51

keen to get a British element in. Prince

33:53

Philip is there. Well, the Queen can't because she's

33:55

pregnant with Prince Edward. So good to get Prince

33:58

Edward in as well. Right,

34:00

your great patron. Yeah,

34:02

I know you're a big fan of Prince Edward, because

34:04

he once said he'd heard of you or something like

34:06

that. Isn't this all he commended you on your book?

34:08

He said he did he very much enjoyed Rubicon. Yeah,

34:10

I'm glad we got that into the Kennedy story, who

34:13

pretended to have read Tom's book. Anyway,

34:15

move on. So

34:18

it's always somebody at these great international occasions

34:20

and funerals, there's always somebody who shouldn't be

34:22

there. And that's generally the British

34:24

Prime Minister. So in the case of elite

34:26

Queen Tom, it was Liz Truss, very demeaningly

34:28

for Britain. And the funeral of

34:30

President Kennedy was Seralik Douglas Hume. So

34:33

the one post war Prime Minister who nobody

34:35

remembers. I remember him because he he

34:37

was in wisdom. He was a very good cricketer.

34:39

He was a very good cricketer. So I'm glad

34:42

we got Rubicon in and we got cricket, which

34:44

I wasn't expecting to achieve before we began this

34:46

episode. And the leader of the Labour Party, Harold

34:48

Wilson is also but also Dominic, it's the first

34:50

foreign live event to be covered on Soviet TV.

34:53

Is it? That is fact. The great concern

34:55

actually, the security concern is not just attacks

34:57

on the Kennedy and Johnson family, but President

35:00

de Gaulle marches in the procession. And

35:02

he's such a tall man that he really stands out.

35:05

And everybody's very worried because the

35:07

OAS, yeah, cause this sort

35:09

of Algerian have they sent a jackal? Have

35:11

they sent the jackal to eliminate him? Yes,

35:13

that's a big concern at the time that

35:15

Algerian terrorists will be out when I say

35:17

Algerian terrorists, I mean, of course, French

35:20

sort of right wing nationalist terrorists

35:22

who do not want to surrender

35:24

their position in Algeria. There

35:26

are a million people lining the route. There are 175 million

35:28

people watching on TV in

35:30

the two moments, all of

35:33

our American listeners will surely

35:35

recognize. There's a specter

35:37

could have this horse called blackjack,

35:39

the symbol of a foreign leader. So

35:41

this huge black horse, it's

35:44

riderless. And in the

35:46

stirrups are two empty boots reversed.

35:49

I don't really know where that comes from. But it's

35:51

obviously a very spectacular kind

35:53

of demonstration of loss regret for

35:55

the loss leader. Yeah. And the

35:57

other is the heartrending moment of

36:00

John, Junior, aged three, on his

36:02

birthday in his little suit saluting

36:04

his father's casket. So,

36:06

you know, we often say in Britain, we're the only

36:08

people that do these things well, but the Americans did

36:10

this brilliantly on this sort

36:13

of very moving moment. And there

36:15

are two other funerals, as you say. There's a

36:17

funeral just outside Fort Worth at the Rose

36:19

Hill Cemetery, which is the funeral of

36:21

Lee Harvey Oswald. And it's been really difficult, hadn't

36:23

it, for Robert, his brother, to find a place

36:26

that would accept his body. He keeps

36:28

ringing round and they say, no, we're not going to have him.

36:30

Can't get any priests. Of all the Oswalds, I

36:32

mean, I actually feel really sorry for Robert. I

36:35

may feel sorry for Marina as well, but they're

36:38

dragged into this situation, as you say. Nobody

36:41

gives them any house room. And the priest, they eventually

36:43

book, he's a Lutheran. He doesn't even turn up. He

36:45

lets them down, doesn't he? They get

36:47

to the cemetery. The cemetery say to them, look,

36:49

you can do it, but you

36:51

must tell everybody that it was already arranged

36:53

and booked. In other words,

36:56

you can't say that we allowed you to do

36:58

it after we knew of the assassination. And

37:01

there are so few people that the reporters have

37:03

to carry the coffin, those reporters who've been sent

37:05

to cover it. But

37:07

the funeral that actually I find really moving

37:09

is the funeral of the one man who's

37:11

always forgotten the other victim, which is J.D.

37:13

Tippett, the policeman. Shot by Oswald. Yeah, his

37:15

funeral took place at Beckley Hills Baptist Church

37:17

in Dallas. There are 1,500 people

37:19

there, 700 uniformed policemen went. He

37:25

had a $7,500 life insurance

37:27

policy, which obviously wouldn't be very much for his

37:29

family to live on. And they

37:32

got loads and loads

37:34

of donations. American

37:36

Footballers, the Detroit Lions, they remembered the

37:38

team, sent money. New

37:40

York Stockbrokers, a guy called

37:43

Walter Annenberg, who was a newspaper mogul and

37:45

kind of political donor. Yeah, he was ambassador

37:47

to London, wasn't he? He was indeed. Yeah,

37:50

and Nixon. Yeah, and Palm Springs, big house, I've been to it. Have

37:53

you? That's a great bit of name dropping. So

37:55

he paid off their mortgage, the Tibbetts mortgage. In

37:58

total, they were sent $650. $50,000.

38:00

Such was the wave of sort of

38:02

sympathy for the Tippett family. Both

38:06

Robert Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson made time to

38:08

call Tippett's widow and to say how sorry

38:10

they were. Well that reflects well done. And

38:13

Jacqueline Kennedy sent her a gold

38:15

framed photo and said, there

38:18

was another bond that we share. We must

38:20

remind our children all the time what brave

38:22

men their fathers were. So very

38:25

moving. Lump in the throat. Yeah, very

38:27

lump in the throat moment, Tom. So

38:30

that's the narrative. Now

38:32

of course the question which we haven't really...

38:34

We've kind of hinted at it, haven't we?

38:36

I mean we have told you about the

38:39

police case and what police think happened. We

38:42

haven't told you what other people think happened

38:44

or actually Tom what you and I think

38:46

happened. So that is yet

38:49

to come. So we

38:51

are five episodes into this epic

38:53

survey of JFK, his assassination

38:55

and the aftermath of the assassination.

38:57

But we have the whole question

38:59

of who might really have killed

39:01

him? Was it Lee Harvey

39:04

Oswald operating alone? Was he

39:06

perhaps part of a broader conspiracy? Was he,

39:08

as he had claimed to be, a patsy?

39:11

So we

39:13

will be back trying to answer

39:15

those questions. You'll get them no

39:18

matter what. But if you don't

39:20

want to wait, you can go to

39:23

therestishistory.com where you can join the Rest

39:25

of History Club and get immediate access.

39:27

But whichever way you choose to go,

39:29

I hope that you will join us

39:31

again for the conclusion

39:33

of this extraordinary story. Thank

39:36

you very much Dominic for,

39:38

you know, call the forces of race and

39:41

there's more to come. So we'll see you very soon. Bye

39:43

bye.