Nixon's Secret (29 page)

Nixon would famously attend a cocktail party in honor of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at the Texas ranch of Clint Murchison Jr. on the eve of Kennedy’s assassination. This is not to be confused with a meeting later that night at the Murchison estate that was attended by Vice President Lyndon Johnson. Nixon stopped by for social reasons and left early. We know this because later that evening, Nixon was seen at the rooftop restaurant of the Statler Hilton hotel, where musical comedy star Robert Clary, later of Hogan’s Heroes fame, performed.
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The sighting of Nixon at dinner did not preclude him from attending the earlier cocktail party in honor of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Like Hoover, and Lyndon Johnson, Nixon had enjoyed Murchison’s hospitality at Del Charro, a resort he owned outside of San Diego. As we detailed in
The Man Who Killed
Kennedy
: The Case Against LBJ,
it was not until the late night meeting, well after 11 p.m., attended by LBJ, Murchinson, Hoover, and oil tycoon H. L. Hunt, among others, where the final touches were put on the plan for Kennedy’s assassination the very next day. Nixon was not there.

Charlie McWhorter was Nixon’s political aide for eight years. “Murchison was one of the few who came through for Nixon in ‘62. He was having trouble raising money because Rockefeller had turned off the spigots in the East. At that point, Rocky contemplated his own ‘64 run,” the gnome-like, meticulous McWhorter said. “Murchison put in two hundred grand,” said the longtime political staffer. “Nick Ruwe went to pick it up in Dallas because it was cash.”

“There was no way the old man could refuse an invitation to see Murchison while he was in Dallas,” said McWhorter. “Nixon’s presence that day though had more to do with Don Kendall.”

It requires some examination as to why Nixon was in Dallas that fateful day. The answer to that question lies in Nixon’s relationship with Don Kendall, the head of Pepsi-Cola.

Kendall and Nixon had a shared uncertainty about Castro and his Communist intentions in Cuba. The island was the world’s leading supplier in sugar, an essential ingredient in Kendall’s Pepsi-Cola, and the trade embargo was bad for business.
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Kendall had an interest in Nixon because Nixon had a scorn for Castro and an elimination of both Castro and the trade embargo would lower the cost of sugar for Kendall’s famous cola. Kendall maintained more than a casual interest in foreign policy, and as Russ Baker speculated in
Family of Secrets
, the CIA had more than a casual interest in Pepsi-Cola:

“The agency used bottling plants, including those run by Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and other companies, for both cover and intelligence,” wrote Baker. “Moreover, the local bottling franchises tended to be given to crucial figures in each country, with ties to the military and the ruling elites.”
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Kendall had many ties to the CIA. Kendall would book the Pepsi-Cola bottler’s convention at Dallas, Texas’s biggest venue, the Market Hall, on November 22, 1963. Ultimately, the move would assist the JFK assassination conspirators. The removal of the Market Hall from the list of potential locations JFK was to speak at in Dallas helped force JFK’s motorcade through the Dealey Plaza, where he was assassinated.

JFK’s advance man Jerry Bruno had wanted the luncheon at the Women’s Building following the motorcade from Love Field. He mapped out the original route. The route for the Women’s building would have passed by Dealey Plaza briefly at a high rate of speed, “without taking any turns in or around the Plaza.”
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The HSCA 1979 report on the motorcade stated that the “Secret Service initially preferred the Woman’s Building for security reasons, and the Kennedy staff preferred it for political reasons.”
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Texas Governor John Connally argued passionately with JFK’s advance man Jerry Bruno for the Dallas Trade Mart to be the luncheon venue. According to Connally, Vice President Lyndon Johnson would not stand for it. The governor’s unwavering position on the Trade Mart, the only point of contention in Kennedy’s five-city tour of Texas, ignited a quarrel between the Kennedy and Johnson people.

“Dallas was removed and then put back on the planned itinerary several times,” wrote JFK’s longtime secretary Evelyn Lincoln. “Our own advance man urged that the motorcade not take the route through the underpass and past the Book Depository, but he was overruled.”
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As a compromise, Kendall booked Market Hall as the luncheon venue. This was essential to the negation of the Woman’s Building as an option, making it easier for LBJ and his cronies to detour the motorcade through the winding Dealey Plaza, where the long, midnight blue presidential Lincoln would have to slow to an almost complete stop.

The bottler’s convention had been falsely reported as a Pepsi-Cola corporate board meeting due to the presence of movie star Joan Crawford, a Pepsi-Cola board member. Some point to the fact that there are no minutes logged of a corporate board meeting in Dallas to signify that there is something suspicious about Nixon’s trip. In fact, it signifies nothing. Nixon and Crawford were both being paid for their celebrity. Nixon, as a lawyer, was billed by the hour.

Nixon’s actions while in Dallas, which were wholly unrelated to his business with Kendall and Pepsi-Cola, however, also deserve some examination. It was clear that the embers of political ambition still burned in the former vice president.

I asked McWhorter about the claim of Madeleine Duncan Browne, Johnson’s longtime mistress, that Nixon and Johnson had a quiet visit at the Adolphus Hotel on the 21st. “There is a three-hour lapse in his formal schedule in which he left his hotel, the Baker,” said McWhorter. “So it was possible.”

Nixon would hit LBJ hard at a press conference on November 21, suggesting what was true: JFK was likely to dump LBJ, who had become a liability because of rumors of massive corruption. Indeed, Charles McWhorter, Nixon’s longtime political aide, told me that Nixon was well aware of an impending Drew Pearson column scheduled for November 23, which outlined in graphic terms LBJ’s taking of a bribe to deliver a multi-million dollar defense contract to General Dynamics for the TFX project. The air force had already resigned after carrying out Johnson’s orders to scuttle the contract, which had be awarded to Boeing. “The old man knew Johnson’s days were numbered and that Bobby Kennedy was on his ass,” said McWhorter. “That’s why he was so confident in his press conference prediction that LBJ was on his way out.”

Johnson’s longtime mistress Madeleine Brown insisted that on his trip LBJ also met with Nixon privately on the afternoon of November 21 at a suite at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. Neither Johnson nor Nixon ever publicly acknowledged the Adolphus Hotel meeting or what was discussed. In fact, during the conversation, a seed was planted within Nixon that was intentionally designed to mislead him.

To misdirect Nixon, Johnson told him of his concern for the president’s safety due to the atmosphere of hate in Dallas. Johnson warned Nixon of the dangerous right-wing cauldron that boiled in the city. Only weeks earlier, US Ambassador to the UN and former presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson had been attacked in the street by an angry mob, which spat on him and knocked him to the ground.

Johnson had tried to use this line before. On November 4, 1960, he and Lady Bird were in Dallas at the Adolphus Hotel to rally support for Kennedy when the two were confronted by a right-wing mob holding signs that read, “LBJ sold out to Yankee Socialist” and “Beat Judas.” Johnson alleged that conservative Republican Congressman Bruce Alger organized the riot (a claim Alger later vehemently denied). Using the protestors to his advantage, Johnson turned the event into an extravaganza.

“LBJ and Lady Bird could have gone through the lobby and got on that elevator in five minutes,” said D. B. Hardeman, an aide to House Speaker and Texan Sam Rayburn, “but LBJ took thirty minutes to go through that crowd, and it was all being recorded and photographed for television and radio and the newspapers, and he knew and played it for all it was worth. They say he never learned how to use the media effectively, but that day he did.”
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Johnson would later again cite Alger to intentionally misdirect Nixon. It was Alger, claimed Johnson, who ginned up the “mink coat mob.” Johnson first thanked Nixon for a statement that the former vice president had released in Dallas urging courteous treatment of the president. The vice president asked Nixon to contact Congressman Alger, who Johnson said had been whipping up right-wing enmity in Dallas, to suggest Alger tone it down. With this clever deflection, LBJ laid the groundwork for Nixon’s subsequent conclusion that a right-wing cabal had killed JFK.

In fact, Johnson sent Nixon on a wild goose chase—Alger attended the Murchison party only hours after Nixon and Johnson had met privately at the Baker Hotel. Although a virulent right-winger, Alger carried water in Washington for the same oil barons who funded LBJ’s ambitions.

After his midday conversation with Johnson, Nixon stopped by early at Murchison’s right-wing bash and was no doubt peppered with anti-Kennedy sentiment. LBJ arrived at the party long after Nixon had left, and his ploy to amplify right-wing hatred in Dallas had worked. It is not surprising that Nixon dialed Hoover in the hours after Kennedy’s death to ask if JFK had been killed by “one of the right-wing nuts.” Clearly Nixon was stunned when Hoover told him a left-leaning communist was the sole gunman.

In the aftermath, a clearly confused Nixon told of how he had learned of the assassination. One version had him in New York, taking a cab from the airport following his return from Dallas. “We were waiting for a light to change when a man ran over from the street corner and said that the president had just been shot in Dallas,” Nixon told Reader’s Digest in 1964. Another version also occurred in the cab ride, but the cab driver “missed a turn somewhere and we were off the highway . . . a woman came out of her house screaming and crying. I rolled down the cab window to ask what the matter was, and when she saw my face, she turned even paler. She told me that John Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.”
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A third story had the former vice president returning from his trip to his New York apartment when the building doorman informed him of the assassination. Nixon’s confusion as to his whereabouts could be attributed to LBJ’s misdirection. Shortly following Kennedy’s death, Nixon was “very shaken,” said writer Stephen Hess. “He took out the Dallas morning paper, which had a story about the press conference he had had the day before. He had talked about how the people of Dallas should have respect for their political adversaries . . . He was saying to me in effect, ‘You see, I didn’t have anything to do with creating this.’ He was very concerned that Kennedy had been assassinated by a right-winger, and that somehow, Nixon would be accused of unleashing political hatred.”
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Nixon was genuinely rattled over the loss of the president. The night of the assassination, he sat down to write a letter to Jackie:

Jackie,

In this tragic hour Pat and I want you to know that our thoughts and prayers are with you.

While the hand of fate made Jack and me political opponents I always cherished the fact that we were personal friends from the time we came to the Congress together in 1947. That friendship evidenced itself in many ways including the invitation we received to attend your wedding.

Nothing I could say now could add to the splendid tributes, which have come from throughout the world to him.

But I want you to know that the nation will also be forever grateful for your service as First Lady. You brought to the White House charm, beauty and elegance as the official hostess of America, and the mystique of the young in heart which was uniquely yours made an indelible impression on the American consciousness.

If in the days ahead we could be helpful in any way we shall be honored to be at your command.

Sincerely, Dick Nixon
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Jackie’s response was gracious and especially revealing of Nixon’s political future:

Dear Mr. Vice President—

I do thank you for your most thoughtful letter—

You two young men—colleagues in Congress—adversaries in 1960—and now look what has happened—Whoever thought such a hideous thing could happen in this country—

I know how you must feel—so long on the path—so closely missing the greatest prize—and now for you, all the question comes up again—and you must commit all you and your family’s hopes and efforts again—Just one thing I would say to you—if it does not work out as you have hoped for so long—please be consoled by what you already have—your life and your family—

We never value life enough when we have it—and I would not have had Jack live his life any other way—though I know his death could have been prevented, and I will never cease to torture myself with that—

But if you do not win—please think of all that you have—With my appreciation—and my regards to your family. I hope your daughters love Chapin School as much as I did—

Sincerely, Jacqueline Kennedy
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Though Nixon could still feel John Kennedy’s cold rejection of him, the two men had a very real personal connection. Len Garment wrote, “The two men had been locked in combat just three years earlier; now Nixon, spared Kennedy’s fate, was seen as a survivor. Something of the triumphant Kennedy lived on in the defeated Nixon—a collection of memories, a kind of physical closeness, and an unexpected metaphysical reward for being the living member of a historic duo. Kennedy’s death made Nixon more of a celebrity. As Kennedy passed into history, Nixon pushed forward.”
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Kennedy’s death would enflame the embers that burned within Nixon.

Only two days after writing his letter to Jackie, Nixon would be jolted again when on national television he saw Dallas strip club owner Jack Ruby murder the gunman who allegedly assassinated JFK. “Murray Chotiner brought him in back in ‘47,” Nixon told me. “[He] went by the name of Rubenstein. An informant. Murray said he was one of Lyndon Johnson’s boys . . . we put him on the payroll.” Some have misconstrued this reference. I don’t mean to imply that Ruby was a direct crony of Lyndon Johnson, but rather that Johnson prevailed on Nixon to hire Ruby as a favor to Ruby’s ultimate boss, Carlos Marcello. Ruby’s ties to Marcello, while actively ignored by the Warren Commission, have now been clearly established. As established in my book
The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ,
an unearthed document from the US Justice Department later proved Nixon’s appointment of Ruby.