The day President Kennedy was assassinated. The day when many say America lost its innocence. The day Camelot and the New Frontier vanished along with the promise of new, youthful energy replacing the old stogey establishment generation. “The Torch has been passed to a new generation…” Kennedy proclaimed. He was against those things that held us back from being a more perfect union. His agenda was in part, no intervention in regional wars, like Vietnam. No invasion of countries we didn’t agree with, like Cuba. No racial segregation in our society, like in Alabama. No coddling of wealthy industries like oil and military contractors for political support. No mob control of culture and vice.
He stood for much. He was cut down for most of it. Anyone who was above the age of 8 remembers where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I was in 4th grade. I remember the hollow feeling – a chill. Many teachers, who understood the gravity of the moment, were seen with moist eyes as we were let out of school early. We all shook with nerves as we waited for the dreadful Air Raid sirens to start wailing out their warning of instant, immolated death. A flash of light that would leave all of us as shadows of ash to mark where we died. It was the Cold War. The threat of nuclear annihilation was ever present as we routinely “ducked and covered” under our school desk, facing away from the windows, as if that made any difference to a supersonic nuclear fireball disintegrating everything in its path with the heat of a thousand suns. Kennedy was out to stop all that… ’til he was stopped.
For nearly 40 years I have shared the national “Assassination Fascination” that grips America. Today is the birthday of the founding of that cottage industry of conspiracy theorists and their hundreds of books, movies, TV shows, and articles all trying to make sense of the senseless killing of a man trying to be sensible about our world and America’s place in it.
My new thriller, Ask Not, is in many ways an homage to the national obsession with those 6 seconds in Dallas – six seconds whose devastating effects have lasted 60 years. My hero must sift through the world of conspiracy and fact to try to avenge his brother’s death – a brother who was deep into the assassination craziness.
Recently, during a coast-to-coast radio interview, I was asked where I was when the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza on that day. Here is a short video of my response.
Yesterday was National Television Day. Today is the 60th anniversary of the JFK’s assassination. In many ways, JFK was the first TV president. Right from the start, the televised Nixon-Kennedy debate was a landmark television event. How do we know this? The majority of the people who heard the debate on the radio held that Nixon won hands down. However, TV viewers of the debate overwhelmingly chose the young man from Massachusetts over the former Vice President and veteran politician. Is there some psychological or culturally significant indicator for this? Well, yes and no. Here’s what made the difference, makeup. Yes, it was makeup that maxed out Kennedy’s appeal, the power of this Max Factor was demonstrated when Richard Nixon, a man of the 1940s and 50s, knew that only women wore makeup. Therefore, he politely demurred the powder puff of the makeup person.
Kennedy who had had a constant stable of Hollywood starlets in his orbit and his famous actor, brother-in-law, Peter Lawford, knew all about cosmetology and its power in movies…and now, TV. Here’s the science behind this Max Factor. TV camera tubes of the day were a scientific extension of an X-ray tube, although more benign, early Iconoscope and vidicon television camera tubes x-ray a scant part of a millimeter deep under the skin. Even a clean-shaven face to the naked eye will appear as a 5’oclock shadow under this x-ray effect of the early tubes. Revealing the hair follicles just under any clean-shaven skin. Kennedy opted for the basic makeup (called Block, for a very good reason) while Nixon went full commando with a naked and exposed face. On TV Kennedy looked well-groomed and sharp, while just as clean-shaven Nixon appeared like a bum who didn’t shave. More people watched television than radio and the rest is history.
Kennedy went on to be a very effective practitioner of television. He made many Oval Office Addresses on national crises and social issues that literally brought the here-to-fore, behind-closed-doors machinations of the government. Further increasing his muscular political tone. Even Jaqueline Kennedy masterfully took America on a White House tour and by doing so, immortalized and protected her décor choices and adornment of the mansion ensuring First Ladies in the future would think twice before they changed anything “Jackie” because that’s the way America saw the White House.
Finally, Kennedy’s Assassination and Funeral was named by TV Guide as, America’s Three Day Vigil. So glued to our sets were we that we all witnessed the murder of his assassin, Oswald in the basement of the Dallas jail.
A dozen years later, a much more gruesome milestone was achieved by Kennedy on television, as the film of his gruesome and bloody murder was broadcast to an unsuspecting public on March 6th, 1976, by Geraldo Rivera on his late-night show, Good Night America.
Kennedy was truly the first TV president and, in many ways, JFK and TV changed the world for good and bad.
Read about my latest novel, ASK NOT!, a JFK murder mystery thriller here.
With the upcoming release of my new, JFK thriller, Ask Not! and the new revelations all over the media that retired Secret Service Agent, Paul Landis found the “magic bullet” in the back seat of the limo and placed it on a hospital stretcher, I am constantly asked to comment.
But first, as we say in publishing, a little backstory, President John F. Kennedy was shot at 12:30 p.m. CST as his motorcade weaved its way through Dallas, Texas. At 12:36 the limo with the mortally wounded 35thpresident screeched to a stop at Parkland Hospital’s Emergency entrance. At first, Mrs. Kennedy would not let go of her husband. Her personal Secret Service Agents, Clint Hill, and Paul Landis tried to coax her to release him. They soon realized she was holding his head together and her own sense of propriety had her hiding his ghastly wound from the public. Clint caught on and removed his jacket and covered the president’s head with it and she relented to letting her husband go. Landis’ eye was caught by something shiny in the back seat. He now testifies that “two bright brass bullet fragments” glistened back at him. He collected Mrs. Kennedy’s hat, bag, and lighter. Then noticed an intact bullet resting on the rear deck of the limo. He pocketed the bullet and proceeded into the trauma room where he says he placed the bullet on the president’s stretcher.
Maybe not so MAGICAL after all
Well, that bullet would go on to launch the greatest unsolved mystery in history. It would be renamed the “Magic Bullet” and be identified (Commission Exhibit #399) in the Warren Commission’s Official Report on the Assassination as having made 7 of the 8 wounds Kennedy and Texas Governor Connelly, who was riding in the jump seat right in front of the president, suffered. Ostensibly from the three shots fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the 6th-floor window of the Texas Scholl book depository.
The big news hullabaloo about all this is that if Landis is telling the truth, then that bullet found at the back of the limo didn’t “magically” create the 7 entrance and exit wounds of Kennedy and Connelly only then to fall out of Connelly’s thigh onto the hospital stretcher. Through the tortured math of forensics, it points to a second shooter to account for the total of 8 wounds, the third and last shot making only wound number 8, clearly hitting the president in his head. A second shooter is a most tantalizing prospect since for the past 60 years the official cause of the president’s death was maintained as a lone gunman, 3 shots and no conspiracy.
Ah, but wait! Lost in this hoopla of “blockbuster revelations” is a small fact that I have never heard in my 30 years of investigating this subject. My deep dive into Dallas began as I was researching and writing a screenplay in 1993, and now for my soon-to-be-released novel, Ask Not! in November. And if history is any predictor, it should become the hub of a whole new branch of conspiracy theories. In his testimony, Landis offhandedly mentions seeing “two bright brass bullet fragments” on the back seat. He goes into great detail about one of them, he described it as the size of the end of his pinky and mushroomed. He never described the other fragment. BINGO. New conspiracy fodder for the next 60 years!
Nowhere in any official accounts, including the extensive Warren Commission Report, is there any mention of bullet fragments being found in the backseat of the limo. In fact, the Warren Report specifically states that 5 bullet fragments were found in the car, 4 in and around the front seat, and one under the jump seat that Nellie Connelly, the governor’s wife, was sitting in. To the best of my knowledge and amongst the many researchers and conspiracy theorists I have spoken with in the intervening 3 decades has any mention, documentation, or photos of bullet fragments in the back seat ever come up!*
*(However, there are thousands of alternate theories about the Kennedy assassination that range from plausible to science fiction, so I am sure someone will probably refute that, i.e. “The emperor of the moon, who was opposed to Kennedy’s moon-shot program, admitted to placing those fragments. That was before America’s collective consciousness of moon people was erased during the Ed Sullivan Show with the same device that Tommy Lee Jones and Wil Smith used in the movie Men in Black.” Believe it!)
Back to physical reality and the possible sanity of Landis’ claim. A bullet mushrooms when it slams into something hard, like bone, metal, or stone. It would also ricochet, winding up somewhere other than where it was aimed. Is this the fragment that made the hole in the limo’s windshield or the dent in the chrome trim above the window, then miraculously shot into the back seat without hitting the president or his wife? Or is this the bullet that ricocheted off the chrome and into the president’s throat coming out his back and falling onto the seat? Without the bullet fragment in evidence, we will never know! And hence, buckle your seat belts for the next 60 years of conspiracy theories!
In the meantime, you might enjoy my latest work, Ask Not!, which pits all the conspiracy theories against a valiant effort to right a wrong that ensnares Hank Larson, my main character into a dark and deadly world of conspirators, nuts, and operatives. Unbeknownst to him, he comes into possession of the proof of what really happened in Dealey Plaza that day, and they will kill him and anyone else who touches it.
Tom Avitabile | Best Selling Author, Book Coach, and Screenwriter 