Nov. 23, 1964 - An anguished Jaqueline Kennedy was tormented for some time after her husband’s assassination with the thought that she might have saved the young President’s life if she had pulled him down in the car after the first bullet struck him.
Her vivid testimony, given June 5 to the Warren Commission but just made public today, disclosed her deep shock immediately following the assassination in Dallas, although several witnesses have spoken of her remarkable self-control on that tragic day.
Mrs. Kennedy apparently concluded later that she probably could not have saved her husband after all. This was indicated by her phrase “I used to think” during her testimony before Chief Justice Earl Warren and Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin at her Georgetown home.
Her earlier deep disturbance emerged when she was asked: “Do you have any recollection of whether there were one or more shots?”
“Well,” she replied, “there must have been two because the one that made me turn around was Governor Connally yelling. And it used to confuse me because first I remembered there were three, and I used to think my husband didn’t’ make any sound when he was shot. And Gov. Connally screamed. And then I read the other day that it was the same shot that hit them both.
“But I used to think if I only had been looking to the right, I would have seen the first shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot would not have hit him.
“But I heard Gov. Connally yelling, and that made me turn around, and as I turned to the right, my husband was doing this [indicating with her hand at her neck]. He was receiving a bullet. And those are the only two I remember…
I remember seeing my husband, he had this sort of quizzical look on his face, and his hand was up, it must have been his left hand. And just as I turned and looked at him, I could see a piece of his skull, and I remember it was flesh-colored. I remember thinking he just looked like he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that — no blood or anything.
“And then he sort of put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap. And then I just remember falling on him and saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ I mean, ‘Oh my God, they have shot my husband.’ And ‘I love you, Jack,’ I remember I was shouting. And just being down in the car with his head in my lap. And it just seemed an eternity.” Then Mrs. Kennedy showed what immense turmoil she was going through at that time with the remark:
“You know, then, there were pictures later on of me climbing out the back. But I don’t remember that at all.”
Agent Clint Hill, who ran from the Secret Service “follow-up” car behind the President’s to mount the rear of the Presidential car as it accelerated, was not remembered by Mrs. Kennedy.
Hill told the commission that President Kennedy had ordered the Secret Service not to use the “step boards” at the rear of his car because they had obstructed his access to crowds in Tampa on a trip shortly before the Texas journey.
Asked later what he thought Mrs. Kennedy might have come out onto the rear section of the car to reach for, Hill stated: “I thought I saw something come off the back, too, but I cannot say that there was. I do know that the next day we found the portion of the President’s head — it was found in the street. It was turned in, I believe, by a medical student or somebody in Dallas.”
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