Surrounded by Enemies Read online

  In Surrounded by Enemies, Bryce asks a much better question: What if JFK had survived the assassination attempt of November 22, 1963? What if he had lived?

  This is a question to ponder. For JFK already had a confrontational relationship with the intelligence establishment. He had tried to clean house at the CIA in the aftermath of the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. He and his brother Bobby were flat-out enemies of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, the greatest blackmailer in American history. Kennedy had already shown that he had no intention of being the tool of America's intelligence establishment. He was the President, and he was determined to make the intel chiefs know who was boss.

  Had he survived Dallas, he would have demanded — and gotten — answers. Kennedy was many things, but he was no fool. He would not have been satisfied with the pieties and lies that would have been offered to him. Can anyone honestly think he would have been satisfied with an explanation that pinned it on a lone gunman? Such simplistic lies might satisfy a patriotic public too trusting and distracted to offer a challenge, but they would not have satisfied John F. Kennedy.

  Bryce takes us through this dramatic aftermath. Of all the what-if scenarios ever written about JFK, this is the one that rings true. It is an account that takes us deeper into the clandestine world that JFK himself tried, and ultimately failed, to gain control over during his life in our timeline. In the parallel history of Surrounded by Enemies, Kennedy’s struggle only intensified after Dallas, and the entire nation bore witness.

  Richard M. Dolan

  June 10, 2013

  Rochester, New York

  ✪

  Introduction

  By Bryce Zabel

  It’s now been half a century since the shots rang out in Dealey Plaza. To admit you lived through their shock and fury is to be of a certain age. Those of us who were children then, at the end of America's great Baby Boom, have forged countless different paths, but we share in common a question that, over the years, has haunted almost all of us:

  What if Kennedy lived?

  Almost since the assassination, writers have speculated about the great things President Kennedy would have done for the country and the world had his life been spared in Dallas. It’s commonly assumed he would have rolled back our Vietnam involvement, enacted landmark civil rights policy, made peace with the Soviets and even finished the attack on organized crime.

  That upbeat scenario is probably wishful thinking. Kennedy had a definite to-do list for a second term, yes, but the forces in opposition to his presidency in 1963 were organized and powerful. Let’s shade the question just a bit differently:

  What if Kennedy survived Dallas?

  This new question puts front-and-center the plain fact that Kennedy's survival could not exist in a story vacuum, as if November 22, 1963 were just another day. After all, whether or not Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the President of the United States still had been targeted for execution in broad daylight on a public street before a global television audience. Life would not have pinged back to normal if the assassin's bullets had missed their target.

  Investigations would have been launched to determine if what just happened was an attempted professional hit, a failed political assassination, or the work of a crazed, lone gunman. In any case, the world would have been turned upside down during this period, raising an avalanche of questions and blowback on multiple fronts, particularly since the President would have been alive and asking these questions himself, along with some of the world’s most powerful allies, including a brother in charge of the U.S. Justice Department.

  If there were conspirators, they and their target would have regarded each other like scorpions in a bottle. In a cascade of post-ambush cause and effect, these traitors who had plotted to achieve a coup d'état by public murder would have found President Kennedy now physically impossible to get at, protected by enhanced security. In this telling, the system comes unhinged, and the conspirators go after Kennedy by other means after their bullets fail.

  There is no doubt that John Kennedy’s presidency was a high point in our nation’s history. What we did not know when we were living through it, however, was that President Kennedy's reckless behavior behind the scenes kept him always one headline away from disaster. Surviving a well-planned assassination attempt could not have made JFK’s personal weaknesses any easier to disguise. He also had enemies with the means to lay bare the most intimate secrets of his private life. Had they done so, the President’s dark side clearly had the potential to destroy any second term the voters might have granted him.

  This alternative history, then, is not a time-travel story with a protagonist sent back to save JFK (a continuing fascination right up through last year’s Stephen King book 11/22/63). That kind of political science-fiction usually sees an idealized and heroic JFK through rose-colored glasses. Rather, this narrative sheds light on the shadowy events of late 1963 in the context of the constitutional crisis they easily could have triggered. To the best of my knowledge, this is a new way to examine the what if of JFK and ends up illuminating what the stakes were in our own timeline.

  Because Kennedy was the most mediagenic political figure of his time, and possibly of all time, I have created a media vehicle uniquely suited to tell his story. Top Story magazine was, in this alternative historical reality, a struggling newsweekly routinely getting its lunch eaten by the publishing powers-that-used-to-be until it hitched its wagon to the charismatic young President’s star-crossed descent into scandal. A story as big as this demands all the resources a full-fledged news outlet like Top Story would have at its command: teams of reporters, exhaustive research capabilities, a definitive Rolodex. As it happens, all these elements already existed in my own imagination.

  So JFK's epic tragedy is also, tangentially, the chronicle of how one media outlet at the brink of obscurity clawed its way to prominence on the Kennedy coattails. It only makes sense then that I’ve chosen to write Surrounded by Enemies as a book published by Top Story magazine on the anniversary of JFK’s survival of the shootout at Dealey Plaza.

  Here’s a world where, fifty years earlier, history’s tree grew another branch. Where journalism and the counter-culture ignited a political explosion over Watergate in the 1970s and led to Nixon's impeachment in our world, Kennedy's battle with the treasonous forces of conspiracy in the 1960s in the alternative scenario probably would have triggered an implosion in JFK's reputation. Rather than the steady drip of scandal we’ve experienced over the past five decades, the events surrounding a failed JFK assassination might have gotten seriously out-of-hand, and fast.

  Many people now see The Warren Commission Report as the greatest work of American fiction published in the twentieth century. Still, it’s been impossible to ignore the importance and validity of the “Oswald acted alone” pushback we've seen recently, from Stephen King’s book to Bill O’Reilly’s Killing Kennedy to legendary prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History. And it’s nothing new. Even back in the immediate aftermath, the Byrds rewrote the popular folk song “He Was a Friend of Mine” to say, “His killing had no purpose / No reason, no rhyme.” In my opinion, that is the wrong sentiment wrapped up in a classic melody.

  After a lifetime of casual reading on the topic compounded by this recent intensity of research, I’m simply swayed that whatever role Lee Harvey Oswald actually played on history's grand stage, his was not a one-man show but one populated by and synchronized with multiple unseen actors. That is the point of view from which I’ve written this fictional account.

  Since we live in a time of often bitter polarization, it is also worth noting that I’m a lifelong Democrat who remembers when America's two great political parties at least tried to work together for the good of the country. I write this book because, to me, its scenario is a fascinating what if, not because of any agenda involving President Kennedy. This alternative history depicts Kennedy — accurately, I believe — as an enormously charismatic man whose intelligence, political
mastery and legendary charm could not, ultimately, disguise his deeply human flaws.

  Surrounded by Enemies is not a research book. I have changed names, compressed events and, in the interest of presenting an alternative history, made up some things completely. I have tried to do all of this with a healthy respect for the actual facts of the matter, but there is no question that I have taken many liberties. On the other hand, I also ask that everyone who sees a real name in this piece of fiction understand that the person in question is a character in a story that takes place in a parallel universe. In a world that accepts stories about Abe Lincoln as a vampire hunter, this story should not offend, but intrigue.

  In several instances, I have taken existing documents and quotes from the Nixon and Clinton impeachments, lines from past State of the Union speeches, etc., and modified them to fit this story. In this context, I hardly think this sampling is a literary sin, but a device to show just how possible it is to see JFK in a similar context. In any case, very little of this book contains this type of historical transposition. I have not footnoted my work with tedious accounts of its accuracy or fabrication, because it is meant to be read as an immersive piece of fiction; to undertake such an academic challenge would only distract the reader. Those engaged by the events of this story are encouraged to begin their own research and draw their own conclusions.

  The plain reality is that Jack Kennedy had a lot of things he was hiding and there were numerous powerful men who wanted him dead. If those conspirators had taken their shots and missed, President Kennedy would have come back at them not only with a vengeance, but also with a carefully constructed strategy. The very existence of Attorney General Robert Kennedy and his family loyalty guarantees that. I’ve come to see this entire story, despite its many working parts and vastly different points-of-view, as the story of two brothers. Had the shots fired in Dallas, Texas missed their target on November 22, 1963, they still would have set the 1960s ablaze, turning John and Robert Kennedy into the original conspiracy theorists. Their story from this alternate world needed to be told and I've enjoyed telling it.

  Bryce Zabel

  Los Angeles, California

  June 10, 2013

  ✪

  Chapter 1:

  Seven Days in November

  _______________

  November 22, 1963 - November 28, 1963

  From the Editors of Top Story

  This book about the fate of America’s thirty-fifth President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, takes its inspiration from the Top Story newsweekly coverage of the 1960s. That breaking news “instant history” has been revised and updated by our 2013 editorial staff to provide a perspective to the events of the 1961-1966 Kennedy administration, and make it feel fresh again.

  This endeavor draws heavily from the work of Top Story reporters Frank Altman and Steve Berkowitz and their journalistic efforts throughout the national crisis that began in Dallas and continued for years through Washington's corridors, forever changing our national identity. On November 22, 1963, at the time those shots cracked through America's sense of well-being, Top Story had been publishing for barely a year and was teetering near bankruptcy. It's fair to say that behind some acknowledged journalistic bright spots, this magazine was mired behind the two leading newsweeklies of that era, Time and Newsweek, in both circulation and gravitas. While those publications were headquartered in New York, Top Story was then, as now, based in Washington, D.C., and was more heavily tilted toward American policy issues and the people behind them.

  This special fiftieth anniversary compilation clearly shows that times of extreme danger and uncertainty do not preclude politics but intensify its practice. In addition to our own archives, the dramatic scope of this endeavor draws on the accumulation of five decades of history and journalistic digging, tell-all books from those who were involved and even some private papers released in 1998 by the Kennedy family, following the death of Robert Kennedy at the age of seventy-two.

  Responding to a French journalist's question with characteristic élan at a historic, 1965 press conference, John Fitzgerald Kennedy gave the world some insight into why it all mattered. “Forgive your enemies,” he said, “but never forget their names.”

  “The Day JFK Dodged a Bullet”

  Our nation and the world breathed a sigh of relief upon learning President Kennedy had miraculously avoided the bullets targeting him in Dallas, but that feeling was overshadowed by an almost unthinkable fact: Someone had tried to murder our President. That thought proved to be so unnerving that country music populist Jimmy Dean scored a December 1963 instant hit with his upbeat ballad, “The Day JFK Dodged a Bullet.” The phrasing fit right in with the mythos that had been so carefully cultivated since a young, brave, PT boat officer named John F. Kennedy began seeking office almost twenty years earlier. It was a way to see the unnerving current circumstances as proof of the President’s charmed life rather than a shattering of our national calm.

  As the events broke that day, however, there was fear and confusion among all the President’s men working in his White House. Many of their stories of shock and panic in Dallas have been told now, but other accounts have been lost in the fog of conspiracy. We know the number of bullets but continue to argue about who fired them and from where. We also know now that their intended target, President Kennedy, quickly recovered from his minor injuries and sprang into action.

  In retrospect, it is clear that within the first hour after the event, both the President of the United States and the attorney general felt the government they represented was under siege and their civilian authority was in serious jeopardy. How they came to that conclusion, and what they said to those working in the White House in those first days set the stage for an epic confrontation.

  Dealey Plaza

  As the presidential motorcade turned into Dealey Plaza, Secret Service Special Agent Clinton J. Hill did not like what he saw. To the left of the President’s car was an open, landscaped area at the western end of downtown Dallas. Hill, riding on the left running board of the follow-up car, felt his stomach tighten at the sight of so much open space. On the right, he saw the Texas School Book Depository, toward which the President was waving. Hill glanced up to the building’s higher floors. The bodyguard’s reflex changed the course of history.

  A glint of metal in the midday sun flashed from a window on the sixth floor. It is not clear whether Hill saw only the rifle barrel or also, perhaps, the man who was holding it. Either way, there was no time to look, only to act. He launched himself from the running board of his own vehicle and sprinted toward the President’s car, screaming, “Go! Go!” as he leaped on the trunk and scrambled forward.

  The driver, Secret Service Special Agent William Greer, inexplicably had hesitated and nearly slowed to a stop, a reaction opposite from what he had been trained to do. Hill screamed, “Greer! Now!”

  Greer mashed his foot down on the gas, swerving out of his lane in an evasive pattern. Even as he did, multiple shots were fired, seemingly from a variety of directions, according to numerous witnesses. The presidential motorcade had entered what would come to be called the “Kill Zone.”

  Hill was the agent assigned to the First Lady but, in an instant like this, he was trained to cover the President, particularly when he saw that the agent in the passenger seat, Roy Kellerman, whose job it was to protect the President, was frozen, just as Greer initially had been.

  Hill tried to push the President down, but Kennedy’s body was stiff; it wouldn’t bend even under Hill’s muscle. The Secret Service agent instantly readjusted so he could move both President Kennedy and the First Lady into prone positions across the seat. He supported his body over them with both arms.

  The President, by his own testimony under oath before his interrogators at his U.S. Senate trial, screamed, “Jesus Christ! They’re trying to kill all of us!” His advisers Kenneth O’Donnell and Dave Powers reacted similarly. O’Donnell was JFK’s appointments secretary and political sounding
board and Powers was the President’s long-time close friend. Because of their White House importance, the two men were riding in the car immediately behind Kennedy, and they, too, felt they were being targeted from at least two directions and that everyone was going to die.

  Agent Hill was hit twice, one bullet shattering his spinal cord and the other ripping through his left temple. The amateur film of Dallas resident Abraham Zapruder caught the action, including a spray of blood and brains that appeared to knock Hill’s head back and to the left. For many observers, the head shot did seem to indicate that at least one bullet was fired from a grassy knoll area nearby and not from the upper window of the book depository, the likely origin of the first spine-shattering explosion.

  Later testimony from witnesses told a tale of Secret Service agents in other cars who seemed asleep or operating in slow motion. All that can be stated for certain is that the heroic Agent Hill’s instant action had forced Greer to react quickly enough to make up for any other neglect that may have been in operation. Kellerman had similarly snapped into delayed response and had climbed back to the jump seats that Governor Connally and his wife were using. Connally was bleeding badly but he wasn’t Kellerman’s concern. The Secret Service’s job is to protect the President first and the First Lady second, at all costs. The description says nothing about the governor of Texas. And so, even as Kellerman lay across the Connallys, he looked directly past them to Kennedy. “Mr. President, are you hit?”

  The President and First Lady were covered in blood and brains that had been splattered from the shots that had nearly taken off an entire side of agent Hill’s head and broken his back into pieces. Kennedy answered honestly, “I don’t know.”