John Connally (1917–1993)

One of the major events in the world was the death by assassination of JFK. So many books have been written about this event that they could fill libraries all on their own. Even Stephen King wrote a famous novel 11/22/63 about using time travel to stop the shooting from happening. The band The Human League wrote a song called Seconds describing the idyll scene which Oswald’s bullet disrupted. Stanley Kubrick’s film Full Metal Jacket has a scene mocking the Marines using dialogue from R. show more Lee Ermey saying Oswald fired three shots in six seconds from 250 feet away as a standard for military marksmanship.
This is a worthwhile book to read. In History’s Shadow, is not perfect but it has enough going for it that even for the general reader it would be worth skimming over. It is extremely sad, and the ending is strangely sad as well. If I start to skim a book, I know I will not finish it and not recommend it. There were a few places where it was a complete was of time with name dropping for politicians’ sake. Other places it was insightful and insightful even when he posits non-sequiturs or obfuscates the facts. This is due to the skill of coauthor Herskowitz.
JFK wasn’t the only person shot on 11/22/63. Connally was also shot, but no one remembers that. He did not die, as JFK did, but Connally will always be part of the mystery of that fateful day. This is the reason I read this, to find out his side of the story. Connally tells us that he was a lawyer and worked as Lyndon Johnson’s close confidant for years, getting Johnson elected to various offices. Connally says that he never had the satanic figure of LBJ that other people have painted. For me, Johnson is a satanic figure for willingly burying a generation of American youth for no good reason or at least no good reason to let not let them obtain battlefield victory. The issue of the Vietnam war plays an unusually small part of the book even though Connally says that it tainted three presidents (JFK, Johnson and Nixon).
Back to the assassination. This is the famous six seconds of rifle firing taken out of the longer Zapruder film which shows most clearly what happened. Connally accepts most of what the The Warren Commission concludes. Connally addresses what happened that day in three separate reflections. The first has to do with a general description of events when the shots were fired. Then later he goes over the same scene as part of his day’s planned events along with his hospital stay. Lastly, he considers the assassination in retrospect as he aged in political experience and family life. Connally says that Oswald was the shooter and there was no other assassin and no conspiracy. He says that Oswald killed officer Tibbit as he fled. He says that Oswald fired all three shots (no rounds were ever recovered) and the one round that fell out of Connally’s body in the ER room was picked up by a nurse and put into her pocket never to be seen again. Connally says that the first shot hit JFK in the neck, the next shot hit Connally in the back as they both sat waving in the car. The shot Connally took went through his back, through his wrist (resting above his leg) and into his leg. The round that was lost in the hospital room fell out of Connally’s leg. Connally said that shell casings were found in the Book Depository. Since no rounds were recovered, we will never know if the shell casings housed the bullets that went through the rifle barrel of the recovered rifle. Connally said the rifle was scoped which I hadn’t heard mentioned before. Connally says that paraffin tests showed that Oswald had recently fired a weapon. Oswald used to practice with it (6.5-mm Mannlicher-Carcano) on the target range and others admired his accuracy while at the range. Oswald’s landlord complained that Oswald kept the rifle wrapped in a rolled rug while Connally remarked that Oswald had ridden to work that day with a neighbor carrying a long bulky package that Oswald said contained curtain rods. Connally says that there is a “wrong man theory” which involved himself. Apparently, Oswald had sent Connally, then Secretary of the Navy under JFK, to restore his discharge to honorable after Oswald was dishonorably discharged when Oswald defected to Russia. Connally never received the Oswald letter, so the conspiracy goes that Connally was Oswald’s primary target over the discharge request. Connally never believed the magic bullet theory mocked by Oliver Stone in the film JKF. When Connally was Secretary of the Treasury under Nixon, Connally said that he consulted all the secret service men who had worked on the case and reviewed all the reports and concluded that “no sane person to believe a conspiracy has succeeded”. Connally seemed to dislike the CIA and therefore didn’t see any reason to look there. He also never asked JBL if he had anything to say about the day. We know now that there are still current CIA classified files not released to the public. No president has ever released them in full unredacted form. This was a book full of surprises. I like memoirs, but not DC gossip stuff. Connally was a democrat of the highest influence and then he became a Republican. A strange story and a sad story of a man who sat in a car with a man whose death changed a nation and whose presidential successor doomed a generation of American youth to garrison occupation in south east Asia.

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