Seven Days in November 1963: The Kennedy Assassination

By Edward J. Gibbons

Living in a Dallas boardinghouse, separated from his wife, Marina, and their two children, Lee Harvey Oswald feels completely powerless and desperate. But on November 19, 1963, he sees two articles in the Dallas Times Herald; one on the front page in which President Kennedy calls for the overthrow of Castro in Cuba, and the other announcing the presidents visit to Dallas this coming Friday. This, Oswald believes, is the opportunity for which he has been waiting.
In Seven Days in November 1963, author Edward J. Gibbons presents a fictionalized account of Kennedys assassination, an event that has posed a tragic, complex puzzle to most of the American public for five decades. Gibbons fits the pieces of that puzzle into a plausible, understandable story that takes place during the course of seven days in Dallas in late November 1963a time of heightened Cold War tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, focusing on Cuba.
Seven Days in November 1963 tells how Lee Harvey Oswald, the presidents assassin, and Jack Ruby, the man who would kill Oswald two days later on live national television, both had their own twisted, delusional motives for committing their acts of violence. It also explores how the investigation into the assassination was compromised by American intelligence agencies that omitted vital information to protect themselves from responsibility or blame for the presidents death, thus leading to decades of confusion and conspiracy theories about what actually happened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jun 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475988987

Edward J. Gibbons

Edward J. Gibbons graduated from Fullerton State University. He is currently retired and living in Ventura, California, where he is writing a play based on Lyndon Johnson and the Vietnam War. This is his debut novel.

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Copyright © 2013 EDWARD J. GIBBONS.

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Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-8897-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8899-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8898-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013908152

iUniverse rev. date: 5/23/2012

Contents

INTRODUCTION

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1963

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 1963

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1963

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1963

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 1963

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1963

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1963

CONCLUSION

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

ENDNOTES

For my mother,

Joye Ramona Gibbons (1913–2004)

The prisoners in the fifth-floor holding cell at the county jail on Houston Street had a perfect view of the president’s motorcade as it passed directly beneath them. They twisted their necks and pressed their faces against the bars of the holding cell’s two windows to get a better view of the president’s limousine as it rounded the corner and slowly headed west onto Elm Street. The president himself was less than a hundred yards away. The prisoners had a clear view of him and the first lady as they waved to the thousands of cheering Dallas citizens who had lined the streets around Dealey Plaza to greet them when the first shot rang out.

Damn, what was that? the prisoner with the best view said to his cellmates as hundreds of startled pigeons scattered from their perches on top of the downtown buildings.

That was a rifle, man, said another prisoner.

As they pushed their faces against the bars even harder to see where the shooting was coming from, they heard the crack of a second shot and recognized the unmistakable sound of a high-powered rifle.

Look, look up there, across the street! screamed another prisoner, who could see a rifle protruding from the open upstairs window of the warehouse on the corner at Elm Street. Just then, a third and final shot pierced the air.

Jesus Christ! shouted some of the prisoners who had their eyes on the president in his limousine.

What the hell is going on?

His head exploded just like a watermelon! yelled another prisoner. Did you guys see that? Damn!

The prisoners screamed for the guards and banged on the jail bars and windows as they pointed across to the large warehouse on Elm Street. Down on the street, the city’s celebratory mood had turned to one of confusion, hysteria, and fear. The boyishly handsome president, who had been smiling just moments before, now lay dying in the arms of his stunned wife.

INTRODUCTION

The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, has remained a tragic mystery to the majority of Americans for the past five decades. The assassination itself was not born of any conspiracy, but the characters and events leading up to that dreadful day during the height of Cold War tensions were very complex and confusing. Adding to the complexity and confusion were our own US intelligence agencies, which omitted vital information, either out of self-interested concern with protecting their sources and methods and avoiding blame for the president’s assassination or from genuine fear of creating another confrontation with Cuba and the Soviet Union on the heels of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. The answer probably lies somewhere between the two.

Nonetheless, in the end, there were definite motivating factors that tell the story of the assassination of the president and of the murder of his assassin just two days later. A few of the most relevant facts and events immediately before and after the assassination are as follows.

On Wednesday, September 25, 1963, two months before the assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald boarded a Continental Trailways bus in New Orleans. Two days later, on Friday morning, September 27, he arrived in Mexico City aboard a Flecha Roja bus with a Mexican tourist visa and a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver in his pocket. The purpose of his trip was to secure a transit visa at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City and defect to Cuba to work and fight for his hero, Fidel Castro. Travel to Cuba from the United States by US citizens had been prohibited earlier in 1963, only a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Oswald had no intention of returning to the United States once he was in Cuba.

Seven days later, on Thursday, October 3, Oswald, bitterly disappointed and frustrated, arrived back in Dallas a beaten man. He had failed to achieve his dream of defecting to Cuba and joining Castro’s Marxist revolution. But during his seven days in Mexico City, the former marine and defector to the Soviet Union had been busy. He had visited the Cuban consulate and Soviet embassy on numerous occasions in his frantic attempt to secure a Cuban visa. Then, trying a different approach, he fell in with a group of Mexican Marxists in hopes of finding a Cuban sponsor for his visa so he could bypass the Soviet embassy altogether. Oswald also found the time to have an extramarital affair with a married Mexican national, Sylvia Duran, who was employed by the Cuban consulate and who shared his love of Cuba and Marxism. Duran was sympathetic to Oswald’s desire to get to Cuba and, in her capacity as a consulate employee, tried to help him find a sponsor and secure a Cuban visa. Without question, Oswald’s failure in Mexico City had a profound effect on his future actions when he returned to the United States, and his activities while he was there would have a chilling effect on US government decisions after the assassination.¹

It is the author’s belief that Oswald was kept under constant surveillance in Mexico City by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Mexican Intelligence (Gobernacion), or Cuban intelligence services—or perhaps by all three. After all, Oswald was an ex-marine who already had a CIA 201 personality file based on his earlier defection to the Soviet Union. The existence of intelligence dossiers on Oswald’s movements and activities, including photographs, in Mexico City has never been acknowledged or revealed by any of these governments and in all likelihood never will be. They may have even been destroyed. The most plausible explanation for burying or destroying these files was to protect CIA intelligence sources and methods, and it is highly probable that the woman with whom Oswald had an affair was at one time a CIA source, or informer, and in all likelihood was still considered a CIA asset when she met him. Thus, his relationship with this woman, Sylvia Duran, compromised the CIA’s ability to tell all it knew about his stay in Mexico City.²

On Tuesday, November 12, 1963, less than six weeks after his return from Mexico City, Lee Harvey Oswald, extremely upset and agitated, walked into the downtown offices of the Dallas Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and asked to see one of its agents. Upon being told that the agent was at lunch, Oswald angrily threw a handwritten, signed note addressed to the agent onto the desk. The note warned the agent to stop harassing his wife, Marina, a Russian citizen, and threatened the FBI that he would take action against them if they persisted. Oswald’s visit to the FBI and his threatening, signed note only ten days before the assassination were not publicly revealed by a compromised FBI for twelve years. More important, they demonstrate that Oswald had no plans to assassinate the president before November 12.³

As frustrated as Oswald may have been when he returned to the United States in early October, he had not completely given up hope of defecting to Cuba. On or about Tuesday, November 12, the same day he visited the FBI offices in Dallas, Oswald sent a letter to the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC, asking for help in speeding up his request for a Soviet visa so that he could acquire a Cuban transit visa. In the letter, he informed them of his frustrated attempts at their embassy in Mexico City only weeks before and described his anger with both the FBI for harassing his wife and the Cuban consulate in Mexico City for denying his transit visa. In all probability, had Oswald been granted a Soviet visa, he would have returned to Mexico City and tried to complete his defection to Cuba. However, the Soviet Union had dealt with him before and was not about to issue a visa to a man whom they considered mentally unstable.

Six days later, on Monday, November 18, President John F. Kennedy gave a fateful speech in Miami. He spoke to a large gathering of Cuban exiles and delegates of the Latin-American Press Association, which represented newspapers throughout Latin America. The topic of the president’s speech concerned Cuba’s role in Latin America, but in reality, it was a fiery anti-Castro political speech that encouraged the internal overthrow of the Cuban regime with the promise of American support. Kennedy was attempting to appease the exiles after their bitter disappointment with the Bay of Pigs fiasco.⁴

The next day, Tuesday, November 19, the conservative Dallas Times Herald ran a front-page story of the president’s Miami speech under the bold headline: Kennedy Virtually Invites Cuban Coup. Oswald, who was a voracious reader of newspapers and anything to do with Cuba, most certainly saw this headline and read the article with intense interest. In the same newspaper that day was an article about President Kennedy’s upcoming campaign visit to Dallas on Friday; it was accompanied by a detailed map of the route his motorcade would take through downtown Dallas. The map showed that the president would pass directly in front of the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald had been hired only a month before as a clerk filling book orders.

Three days later, on Friday, November 22, 1963, in downtown Dallas, Oswald, while perched in a sixth-floor window of the book depository, assassinated President John F. Kennedy using a high-powered rifle.

On Saturday, November 23, the day after the assassination and eleven days after Oswald’s visit to the Dallas FBI offices, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby walked into the same FBI office and also asked to see one of its agents. Ruby, a police and FBI informant, had an irrational theory about the president’s assassination and was seeking information as well as offering information he had collected regarding the assassination.⁵

The following morning, Sunday, November 24, a distraught and delusional Ruby intentionally sneaked into the basement of the Dallas city jail where he shot and killed Lee Harvey Oswald in cold blood before a live national television audience.

The above litany of dates and events spanning the two months before Kennedy’s assassination and Oswald’s death are important for understanding the complexities of the assassination and how the subsequent investigation was compromised. Had either Oswald’s probable CIA surveillance in Mexico City and his later contact with the FBI or Ruby’s relationship with the FBI and his likely visit to their offices been fully revealed by either intelligence agency in the aftermath of the president’s assassination, both the CIA and the FBI would have faced a political nightmare and been accused of gross incompetence. But, had this information been revealed, the American public would have been closer to the truth of what probably happened and, more important, why it happened.

The omission of important facts and the placing of the intelligence agencies’ sources and methods above the truth resulted in the absence of any reasonable non-conspiracy-based interpretation of the assassination being offered to the public. Gerald Posner’s 1993 Case Closed,6 which debunks many, if not all, of the conspiracy theories, remains the best and most credible study ever written on the assassination. However, it does not attempt to tell the story of why the president and Oswald were killed during that tragic week in Dallas.

Seven Days in November 1963 attempts to present a plausible story of the assassination of the president and the killing of his assassin by focusing on the motives of the killers, Oswald and Ruby. The story begins on November 18 and concludes seven days later on November 24. It argues that Lee Harvey Oswald, frustrated and angry—but rational—acted entirely on his own as a de facto agent of Castro and Marxist Cuba. He was not acting as an official agent of any government, nor was he a patsy for a complicated conspiracy. And two days after the assassination, a confused and delusional Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, irrationally acting on his own misguided beliefs and assumptions and not part of any conspiratorial cover-up, shot and killed Oswald.

By mid-November 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald was an embittered, twenty-four-year-old man who believed he was smarter and more deserving than other people—a man who desperately wanted recognition but got none. He was separated from his wife and their two young daughters and lived alone in a small room in a rooming house a few miles south of downtown Dallas. He felt trapped. He was a mean, abusive husband in an unhappy marriage, unable to provide for his young family with a series of menial, dead-end jobs; he had failed to find happiness or the recognition he thought he deserved in the Soviet Union and had been rebuffed in his last-ditch attempt to defect to Cuba and fight for his Marxist hero, Fidel Castro; he had been given an undesirable discharge by the Marine Corps because he had renounced his American citizenship when he defected to the Soviet Union; and he now believed the FBI was following and harassing him and his family and that they would never stop.

Oswald was a sociopath, a friendless man devoid of empathy, who thought nothing of killing another human being if it helped him achieve his own ends. So, on Tuesday, November 19, 1963, Oswald realized he would be given an opportunity to commit an unconscionable act of violence that would free him from his miserable, delusional life, and he took it.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1963

On a chilly, wet Monday morning in the quiet residential neighborhood of Oak Cliff, a few miles southwest of downtown Dallas, Lee Harvey Oswald arose early as usual. He opened the French doors of his small room, which was no bigger than a large closet, and stumbled barefoot down the cold hallway floor of the rooming house. Oswald was rather small in build, barely five foot nine inches and less than 150 pounds, but he was wiry and deceptively strong. His deep-blue eyes set off his ordinary looks, and although he was only twenty-four years old, his light-brown hair was already thinning.

Now he had to call his wife, Marina, from