Journalist Robert MacNeil on John F. Kennedy's assassination - TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews

I was the white house number 2 correspondence and America was the number 1 and they called a conference on Vietnam in Honolulu all the number ones and everything went to Honolulu so the trip to Dallas fell to me when the president took the the Texas trip my first big presidential trip other didn't a high Ana's and you feel very puffed up as a reporter the first time this happens you your luggage has on a trip of the president with the White House seal and and it's all handled by the way you know it's all and anyway we got to Fort Worth late at night and I got to bed about two in the morning some of the Secret Service and some of the White House press corps went off to a nightclub but I was just too beat and didn't go and I made my arrangements with the NBC cameraman who was traveling goes it's Moe levy and for the next morning and I got up early the next morning and put my bag out in the corridor for the White House to pick up and went down to the press room and had a little the Chamber of Commerce had put on a little breakfast and we had two copies the speech that the president was going to deliver later that day and we so we all marked up our speeches and and wrote a little bit for for a little later then we went to the breakfast no then we went outside to the parking lot and where there was a platform and Jim ride and Yarbrough and Connolly they were all lined up like guilty boys behind him and the president spoke and then he worked the crowd and I was very close to him almost at his shoulder as he went around working the crowd and it was really extraordinary the kind of what that cloud felt for him I mean and he emerged from it I walked with him right beside him back into the hotel and his eyes rested on mine a couple of times he didn't know me well but he knew me slightly and his eyes were absolutely cold always really cold gray the smile was in the crinkles and in the mouth and the big teeth but the eyes somehow remained I was not very cold and calculating anyway as he walked back into the thing he reached into his hip pocket and took out a clean handkerchief and I said well that was pretty good they could and he wiped his hand from shaking hands and the handkerchief was black from Olli and he put it back in his pocket and then went into the lobby of the hotel and there was a crowd on both sides the lobby funneling into the entrance for the breakfast held behind ropes and one woman hysterical said I can't touch him I've got to touch him and like Leonardo's gone and and she so Jim Wright reached out and he touched her with one hand and touch Kennedy with the other as though to transmit the spark and the woman was ecstatic so he went into the breakfast and everybody knows the scene there with the Chamber of Commerce and the boys saying the Yellow Rose of Texas the Boys Choir and they tried to present Kennedy with a Stetson and boots and he wouldn't put the hat on because he would never put a funny hat on and he made the joke about I'm sorry word no I meant the joke outside I'm sorry mrs. Kennedy isn't here but it takes her a little longer to get ready anyway I was landing in the kitchen hotel kitchen with Godfrey McHugh who was his Air Force aide who always traveled on Air Force One with him and there was mrs. Kennedy in the kitchen waiting waiting waiting for the entrance and finally when everybody said where's Jackie where's Jackie then made entrance to thunderous applause huge success and it was full of good fun and I said to Molly be the camera man well we if nothing else happens today we've got a story with Jackie and why don't you take that back to the Fort Worth station and then we'll and then we'll move on so we we gotten the buses outside and went off to the plane the press plane had Fort Worth and the plane landed on this bright bright day and we got out and I had my raincoat and briefcase with me my suitcase had taken care of so I ran to the were to press buses lined up I ran to what looked like the first press box and put my stuff in a seat in the front and then went back outside and finally Air Force One pulled up and I will just never forget the sight of that it was um it was so bright my eyes ached in the sunlight and then when mrs. Kennedy came out and with this pink strawberry ice cream colored suit with the facings of navy blue turned inside out and the little pillbox had to match her hair glossy in this bright light the vivid color and everything it just look sooo reals sir really colorful it was just it made the eyes ache to watch and then when somebody at the foot of the plane handed her a huge bouquet a blood-red roses that the color of those roses in that bright sunlight against the pink of the suit was really startling I felt as though I'd smoked pot or something and had all the which I did once in Tangier and saw what it does to your vision your color vision I mean it enormous ly heightens your color vision anyway it was as though I'd done that and it was only one Bloody Mary but so I followed them as they went along and shook hands along the fence and as I said you could get very close to them and I was right beside Jackie when a hand reached through the chain-link fence and broke one of the roses off and took it back inside and there were people with the high school kids with a banner over the fence that kind of lowered and on the president was all very jar clear and easy and then they got into the limousine and I ran for the press bus and discovered that my stuff had been moved or they'd moved the buses so the one behind it come to the front and my stuff was in the other bus anyway I had a seat right in front of the first press bus on one of the transverse seats right in the front on the opposite side from the driver so we started off in the motorcade and we were about six cars behind the president's car so and being higher up we could see over the other cars in the Secret Service car and the cool car carrying the wire services and public photographers and so in the early part this is weird it was the outskirts of Dallas were almost deserted there were just a few people holding up signs and I began to get a little drowsy and I had this daydream and in my daydream somebody took a shot fired a shot and I got onto the bus and I chased the person who'd fired the shot and then I sort of woke up and I said come on get real and you know there'd been a lot of stuff about some trouble expected in Dallas and they'd got out every policeman cancelled all leaves citizens given the right of citizen's arrest you know they'd really put on heavy security so I shook myself up and began making notes of signs and things there's when we got in downtown Dallas and the street ahead of the motorcade looked like a river whose banks were constantly shifting because people would swell out in the crowd and then swell back and you wondered how the motorcade could get through them because they were weaving sinuously through this crowd of amazing to see and the reception was euphoric unbelievable we all kept commenting on all the nice things people are saying and shouting and we got down to the end of the Main Street just before the turn into Dealey Plaza but I got out my notebook and began making a few notes because in a few minutes at the Merchandise Mart I or the Trade Mart I was going to have to do an NBC news on the hour and I knew what pieces the speech I want to do excerpt and we just turned into Dealey Plaza and I was just figuring what I would lead on when there was a bang and we all said what was that got a backfire was it a firecracker what was that and there was time for us to say that and then there was bang bang very close together like that and I said those are shots stop the bus and the bus had one of those handles that opened the door and I I said stop the bus and I ran over an on bus drivers arm and helped him open the door and I jumped out the bus door closed it went around the corner the air was filled with the most incredible screams I've ever heard it was as though there were a bunch of choirs all deliberately shrieking out of tune and cacophonous Lee it was just on the hysterical unbelievable sound echoing off all these buildings in the plaza I saw I knew really something had happened but I didn't think he'd been hit I thought somebody's fired a gun as a kind of demonstration it was inconceivable to me so I ran around the corner and the motorcade was just disappearing under the underpass and then I noticed that there were people on the grassy knoll who were sitting with their children bent down and sort of half covering their children and I noticed there were policemen and plainclothes men with guns on running up the hill so I ran with them they got to the top of the hill against the fence by the overpass and everybody's paused there from home and looked around and then the cops went over the fence so I went with him and there was nothing there and no signs of anything except empty railroad tracks stretching away behind behind with some trains parked quite far away so I thought jeez I better call NBC and tell him those shots were fired and I ran back along the top looking for a place that might have a phone and the first place that came to turned out to be the Texas Book Depository so I ran up the steps and as I did a young man in shirtsleeves turned half way up came out and I said where's there a phone there's been shots where's the phone he said you better ask inside I went inside there was another young man on a phone by a pillar and he pointed into an office and I went into an office there was one of those old black phones with four clear bakelite clear lucite buttons and two of them were lit up and two of them weren't and I dropped one down and I got through to NBC in about ten seconds in New York the news desk so there's my veil in Dallas urgent urgent somebody said just a minute he put the phone down and I was screaming into the phone Oh God come on come on anyway I did a bulletin saying shots were fired as the president's motorcade passed through downtown Dallas it is not known if the shots were directed at the president people scream and lay down in the grass don't know then I signed too often I went outside policemen stopped me as I ran down the steps I told him who I was under White House badge on and then a little black boy came along and said to the policeman to me mister I seen a man with a gun up in the window there and the policeman ran away or started run away and a woman came up hysterical he said he wasn't hit was he wasn't it and I said no I don't think so the policeman said yes ma'am he was hit bad we went over to the policeman's motorcycle where the radio and the motorcycle was saying taken to Parkland Hospital severe head wounds and I thought oh you know I'm supposed to becoming the president and here I gone off on this goose chase chasing some gunman and and I'm miles away from the president so I ran out into Dealey Plaza the traffic was congealed it was all horns were beeping police motorcycles were riding up over through flower beds and up steps people were screaming Ormsby it was unbelievable chaos and I ran several streets until the farthest Street feeding into the plaza farthest away from the Book Depository traffic was moving so I ran in front of the first car that came along and stopped it and opened the door I said to the young guy I'll give you five bucks here to drive me into Parkland Hospital and he said well okay and five bucks was five bucks then and and I got in and he said what's the matter and I said the president some shot he said yeah I heard that I said what do you mean you heard it well turn the radio on again and he said it's in the back seat he'd heard the president been shot on a little transistor radio only turned it off and put it in the back seat with a bunch of cake boxes he was delivering unbelievable anyway I took him by the arm has slid over buying the seat and I kept punching his arm saying drive faster drive faster NBC will pay any fines don't worry go through red lights anything nobody could have cared less because all the police cars were screaming the other way at a hundred miles an hour past us I got him to stop at a gas station and I went in and did another bulletin to NBC saying he'd been hit in the head and taken to Parkland Hospital uh he got me to the hospital just a few minutes after the motorcade and the pool car all the rest of the press had gone off to the Merchandise Mart in the bus and they didn't turn out for a long time so I went into the emergency room section through the swing doors in the emergency room and there's the emergency room desk and there was Merriman Smith of the u:p dictating the story that won him the Pulitzer Prize that day and the nurse is all on his arm saying you can't use this phone you can't use this phone and Smitty just went on dictating the story I went out and there in a little ante room through another swing door were two pay phones that nobody'd noticed and I grabbed one of them and I had it for the rest of the day and I got through to NBC and then later Bob Pierpoint of CBS turned up and he had the one next to me and we would get interns or doctors or nurses to hold the phone while we went in to try and find out what had happened and talked to whoever we could the priest to deliver the raft writes to the various aids numb no one would say anything I said to the priest if you deliver the last rites does that mean he's dead and he would say I delivered the last rites and that's all he would say then the sweeper Secret Service came through and said everybody out everybody out and Pierpoint and I ducked down there were glass panels in the door that swung out into the main lobby we just ducked down on our phones I'm talking to Huntley and Frank McGee in New York he's talking to Cronkite on the other phone and they cleared everybody out and then we peeked out and here's Lyndon Johnson coming up white as anything surrounded by Secret Service men and aides and we both dropped the phones and we burst out like this Johnson looked as though we were looking I mean Oh God and the Secret Service pushed us out of the way and Johnson just bowled his way past us he knew us both very well and Wallace way past its wind-up sir we reported that he'd gone off and then then later mrs. Kennedy came out and where I was in the lobby as she came by with her on the coffin and the blood all over her skirt and this extraordinary dazed look in her eyes that everybody saw so they went off NBC said you better stay there and we got lots of people in Washington elsewhere you better stay there in Dallas and see what happens there and so then it was announced before I left the hospital and that's the huge difference from today we didn't have a live camera there no way of getting a live camera you know it was all film it would had to be taken back to Fort Worth and processed and then cut and then put on the air Fort Worth was an hour's drive away you know all that today you'd have instant uplinks everywhere it all would have been you know I would have been like one of these CNN people all the time from the thing as it was you did stories when you had something and could get through so NBC only finally got a mobile unit going because it was broken down in Fort Worth they couldn't get the engine going on the mobile unit so they got a a record truck to hoist the front of the mobile unit up and they drove it from Fort Worth to Dallas and the record truck truck and parked it outside the court house and it was there for Oswald's transfer when petted and petted the NBC champ had at the NBC reporter live saying he's been shot my god you know that famous scene so it worked but so I was still at the hospital and I heard that this guy called Oswald had been arrested who worked at the book depository and I said isn't that odd that's the building I went into a gun you must have been coming out about the time I went in didn't think anything more about it I went down to the police station that evening I saw Oswald as they paraded him back and forth twice and anything megha long story short about a year and a half later I was back at NBC in New York and William Manchester was just finishing the death of the president he called me up and said he could I confirm that it was Oswald I had talked to on the steps of the book depositor and I said no I couldn't was didn't know the building at anything to do with the shooting at that time I was just looking for a phone I don't remember the man well enough and he said well I'm convinced and I'm going to say in my book that it was Oswald because I've been all over the ground minutely second-by-second and I've timed your call to NBC and where you were and where other people were and did you know that Oswald told The Secret Service that night that as he was leaving the book depository a young blond crew-cut Secret Service man ran up the steps and asked him for a phone and he says I ngoz were mistook you for a Secret Service man because no Secret Service did go into the building and I was young blond with a short haircut a gray suit on and a White House press badge and so that's what he says several times in the book death of a president and I don't know

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Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 06 2018