Clandestine

Chapter 24 - Dealey Plaza

“Why are we starting this trip in Dallas?” Eleanor asked.

“It’s a long story,” I answered.

“Well, since we have 7 hours on this plane you have plenty of time to come clean,” she said. 

So on the plane ride from London to Dallas I confessed. I told Eleanor that I had been in Dallas up until the day before the Kennedy assassination and that I was going to meet someone in New York who wanted to talk to me about the event. That version of the story left out some of the particulars but I felt it was honest enough to get by for now.

We landed in Dallas in the early evening and made our way from the Dallas/Fort Worth Airport to the Hyatt Hotel, which overlooks Dealey Plaza. I immediately recalled how strange a city Dallas appears to be to a newcomer. The population of the metropolitan Dallas/Forth Worth area approaches six million people but I defy anyone to locate an abode of any kind in the urban space. In the middle of the afternoon Dallas can appear desolate, almost barren. It is an underwhelming experience for visitors who would feel more at home if they saw the occasional person walking the street with purpose or enjoying a cup of coffee. Instead Dallas is the epitome of the modern suburban model, a city built entirely for work, as the people exit the urban core daily in the most secretive manner I have ever witnessed. Perhaps this feeling of eerie stillness is facilitated by the city’s impressive system of roads and other transportation. In Texas the lanes are wide and the roads are designed with purpose. It is important to Texans not be caged in; there must always be an open road ahead and a free path to the future. 

The next day we awoke early in the morning and I endeavoured to recreate some of my steps from 38 years before. I went to the Dobbs House restaurant in Oak Cliff and found that it was now a jewellery store, so there was no possibility of recreating my lousy eggs rant. Then we covered the distance from Oak Cliff back to Dealey Plaza. The schoolbook depository and the grassy knoll appear as they did back in 1963, so little had changed there. A newspaper is still published and distributed as if it were still November 22, 1963 and, in typical American fashion, the sixth floor of the school depository is now a museum that chronicles the assassination, complete with a recreation of the assassin’s lair which LHO was supposed to have prepared for the shooting. The sixth-floor museum stays fairly close to the Warren Commission’s contention that a lone gunman committed the murder. Of course I know that there was a conspiracy because I was involved in providing a context for Mr. Oswald before the shooting. Even my little charade at Dobbs made it into the Warren Report as evidence of LHO as a “fly-off-the-handle” nutcase ready to crack at any time. I am still awaiting my nomination for an academy award. Interestingly enough, while my version of LHO was eating at the café at 10:00 in the morning, another LHO was signed into work at the schoolbook depository at the same time. This is the main concern with the investigation; there were so many games being played over several months that it is impossible to decipher the truth.

Dealey plaza is a perfect spot for an ambush. There are so many places to hide and, as it was located at the very end of the parade route, most of the crowds had thinned by that time. After additional research on the topic I really have no idea what to think, but I do feel that had LHO been afforded legal representation, which he asked for repeatedly, he would not have been convicted of the crime. I have never wavered in my opinion that the shooting of John F. Kennedy was a military-style ambush and could not have been perpetrated by any one gunman. It makes perfect sense to me that LHO played a role in the shooting as a logistics man on the ground. He was probably given a role to play such as bringing the rifle to the building or securing the elevator. He may have been convinced that his aim was security rather than anything nefarious.

Numerous witnesses corroborate Oswald’s statements upon his arrest on the day. He was spotted in the second floor lunch room at 12:25 pm; he claims to have gone out to the door on the first floor to see the parade pass; and there is a photo of someone identical to him there at the time the motorcade passed. Then he returned to the lunchroom, purchased a coke, and was spotted there 90 seconds after the shooting. Unless there was a third Oswald impersonating him, I would say his alibi was pretty tight.