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A SPECIAL KENEDY REPORT 2003 DALLAS NEWS


Bernice Moore

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''"The Legacy of Citizen Robert," http://www.texasmont...-01/feature.php

"However ill-suited for the job he might be, however uninterested he was, Ted Dealey was the only remaining son of the founder. The burden was his. In 1940 his father gave Ted the title of president. Six years later G. B. Dealey died of a heart attack, and Ted had the reins all to himself.

Coarse and Ugly

The new publisher of the Dallas Morning News was unlike any other Dealey. And he was remarkably unlike his father. George Bannerman Dealey had been a serious, industrious child. Ted was expelled from the sixth grade and later sent to a private school for delinquents. G.B. was a cultured man with a fine-tuned sense of propriety. Ted once wrote a Belo executive who had moved into new quarters. "Some day when you're sitting in that fancy new office of yours, keep in mind that at one time in that exact location stood the finest whorehouse in the entire city of Dallas." In a collection of essays about his childhood, titled Diaper Days of Dallas, Ted offered anecdotes about his "masturbation period" and urinating in his pants. G. B. Dealey was a progressive man who ordered the staff to stop referring to "Jew girls" and was sensitive about the treatment of black people. Ted laced his speech with remarks about "niggers." G. B. Dealey never drank, but Ted, like his late brother, drank too much, and the booze turned his mood coarse and ugly.

Ted cared little for the civic meetings and causes, the fundraising drives and betterment groups that had been his father's lifework. He became a charter member of the Dallas Citizens Council, the group of Dallas executives that would chart the city's political course from 1937 to the mid-seventies, but he rarely went to its meetings. He preferred to hunt and fish, often at a private lodge near Athens called Koon Kreek Klub, frequented by other members of the Dallas power structure. His great civic passion was the Dallas zoo.

But the most critical difference between father and son was reflected on the editorial page. Gone was the sense of moderation. The editorials began to take on Ted's personality — strident and shrill, outspoken and mean. Ted Dealey was a red-baiter, a supporter of Joe McCarthy, an unforgiving opponent of the United Nations, an enemy of social welfare and unions and federal aid, and so was his newspaper. In the News' editorial columns, the Supreme Court was a "judicial Kremlin." Liberals were fools, dupes, or fellow travelers. U.S. recognition of Russia, an action that G. B. Dealey had applauded, was a "Queer Deal." Ted Dealey's News never strayed far from its free-enterprise gospel, not even when it was speaking to the high rate of traffic deaths in Texas. The accidents, it observed, resulted from "the same human qualities that made America great—willingness to risk, driving energy, rugged individualism."

Just as G. B. Dealey's editorial page had changed the Dallas of an earlier era, Ted Dealey's shaped his. The public life of the city turned ugly in the fifties and sixties. The art museum took down a Picasso after a barrage of calls protested that the artist was a communist. When the museum board resisted attempts to close a photography exhibit that included Russian photographers, the News headlined its story MUSEUM SAYS REDS CAN STAY. Police pressure forced all local bookstores to take Tropic of Cancer off their shelves. In 1960 Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson were spat on during a campaign visit to the Adolphus Hotel. Four days later John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States, an event that led to Ted Dealey's most notorious public acts.

In October 1961 Ted joined a group of nineteen Texas publishers for a Friday lunch at the White House. It was a typical presidential courting ritual: an elegant bite to eat, an off-the-record briefing, and a bit of pleasant conversation, all harmless enough. But this time was to be different.

After lunch Kennedy spoke to the publishers about foreign affairs and then asked if any of his guests had anything to say. One publisher got up and delivered the best wishes of his local citizenry. Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle."

The other publishers were aghast. "Mr. President," said Jim Chambers, publisher of the Times Herald (Dallas' afternoon paper) and a man who knew Ted Dealey well, "I think you should know that Mr. Dealey does not express the sentiments of all the publishers around this table." The incident produced a national media fire storm, and the News relished every moment. Around the state and the country, Ted Dealey was condemned as a reactionary and a boor. But in Dallas, the News received more than 2,000 letters, and 1700 of them voiced approval of his actions. In Dallas it was Jim Chambers who fielded the stacks of hate mail.

Two years later a News advertising salesman took the copy for an unusual ad up to the executive suite. He was worried about the ad's strong language and uncertain origin. Normally such questions would have been routed through Joe Dealey, Ted's son, but Joe was away at a newspaper convention and wouldn't be back until President Kennedy's visit the next day. Instead, the decision was left to Ted.

Even today Joe Dealey shakes his head at the memory of the ad. "Damn, we ought not to have done it," he says. "If I'd been sitting there, I'd have killed it." But Ted was sitting there, and so, on November 22, 1963, John Kennedy was greeted with the ad that would forever link the Dallas Morning News with the tragic events of that day. "Welcome, Mr. Kennedy, to Dallas," it began, and it went on to ask a series of rhetorical questions, such as "Why have you scrapped the Monroe Doctrine in favor of the Spirit of Moscow?" The entire ad was enclosed in a thick black border. That morning Kennedy read the ad and handed it to his wife. "Oh, you know, we're heading into nut country," he said. Three hours later he was struck dead by an assassin's bullet — as his limousine passed through a plaza named for G. B. Dealey."

-- excerpt from "The Legacy of Citizen Robert," by Peter Elkind. Published in the July, 1985 issue of Texas Monthly.

________

Edited by Bernice Moore
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Guest Robert Morrow

"Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle." "

That is an EXTREMELY important statement above. It reflected precisely the views and opinions of the CIA assassins of John Kennedy. LBJ was killing him for other reasons, but the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans, and even the mafia felt just like Ted Dealey.

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"Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle." "

That is an EXTREMELY important statement above. It reflected precisely the views and opinions of the CIA assassins of John Kennedy. LBJ was killing him for other reasons, but the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans, and even the mafia felt just like Ted Dealey.

FWIW: In my opinion, assassination by bullets (in this case) was preceded by assassination with words--character assassination, that is. The atmosphere in Dallas was poisonous, and was a major factor in being able to recruit for a plot. In short, Kennedy was painted in a false light. Repeatedly.

I had heard about Dallas's atmosphere from the book Dallas: Public and Private, by Warren Leslie. I remember the first time I came face to face with it on a microfilm reader. I had ordered the reels of the Dallas Morning News for July, 1960, to see how that newspaper covered the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. As I told friends at the time, this newspaper reads as if the Civil War was recently over; and the enemy camp was ensconced in Washington.

No matter what Kennedy did, no matter what decision he made--it was always interpreted in some nefarious way.

In my opinion, that has a lot to do with what happened in Dallas in November, 1963--and why so many thought Kennedy was a genuine threat to the national security.

DSL

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"Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle." "

That is an EXTREMELY important statement above. It reflected precisely the views and opinions of the CIA assassins of John Kennedy. LBJ was killing him for other reasons, but the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans, and even the mafia felt just like Ted Dealey.

FWIW: In my opinion, assassination by bullets (in this case) was preceded by assassination with words--character assassination, that is. The atmosphere in Dallas was poisonous, and was a major factor in being able to recruit for a plot. In short, Kennedy was painted in a false light. Repeatedly.

I had heard about Dallas's atmosphere from the book Dallas: Public and Private, by Warren Leslie. I remember the first time I came face to face with it on a microfilm reader. I had ordered the reels of the Dallas Morning News for July, 1960, to see how that newspaper covered the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. As I told friends at the time, this newspaper reads as if the Civil War was recently over; and the enemy camp was ensconced in Washington.

No matter what Kennedy did, no matter what decision he made--it was always interpreted in some nefarious way.

In my opinion, that has a lot to do with what happened in Dallas in November, 1963--and why so many thought Kennedy was a genuine threat to the national security.

DSL

I believe there is even a darker side to the aforementioned in the sense that Jack Ruby's alibi for the critical time period was helped considerably by the same

specifically employees of the Dallas Morning News.

Although it was years after the assassination, an anonymous? contact of Mr. Arlen Fuhlendorf circa 1977 and was told that Jack Ruby called him on the day of the

assassination and asked him if he wanted "to go watch the Presidential parade" with him, and also asked him if he wanted to "watch the fireworks."

This person would seem to be mistaken as he actually related that he and Jack Ruby watched the motorcade with Jack from the area of the Postal Annex Building.

during the critical period of the assassination, and afterwards Jack walked in the direction of the Dallas Morning News without saying anything.

http://www.maryferre...0&relPageId=182

He also related that he was later arrested after Ruby shot Oswald, on an unrelated charge and was a trustee who got to know Ruby better in the Dallas County jail.

Afterwards, the FBI's Udo Specht contacted this person's residence telephonically, but the person who gave Fuhlendorf the information was not home.

Saying such things some fifteen years after the assassination, is not the same as saying them immediately after the assassination or under oath in a court proceeding,

nevertheless, when you realize that it was Dallas Morning News employees, who were providing an alibi for Jack Ruby at the time of the assassination, it does

give one pause to wonder.

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"Then Ted Dealey rose, pulling out a prepared statement. Since Kennedy's election, the News' editorial page had leveled an unrelenting attack on the president: he was a buffoon, a thief, thirty times a fool. Now, face to face, Dealey continued the assault. "The general opinion of the grassroots thinking in this country is that you and your administration are weak sisters," Dealey read to the president. "If we stand firm, there will be no war. The Russians will back down. We need a man on horseback to lead this nation, and many people in Texas and the Southwest think that you are riding Caroline's tricycle." "

That is an EXTREMELY important statement above. It reflected precisely the views and opinions of the CIA assassins of John Kennedy. LBJ was killing him for other reasons, but the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans, and even the mafia felt just like Ted Dealey.

HI ROBERT, YES THAT QUOTE HAS SINCE BEEN INCORPORATED INTO MANY A BOOK AND ARTICLE, THE WHOLE OF DALLAS WERE NOT OF THE SAME CUT, EXTREME RIGHT, THOUGH THERE WERE GROUPS, BUT THE MAJOROTY WHICH WAS SEEN SO CLEARLY AND SHOWN BY THE THOUSANDS OF CITIZENS WHO CAME OUT THAT DAY, TO WELCOME THEM..DID NOT FEEL THE SAME WAY.THEY DID.....BEST B

dallas citizens council http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?act=post&do=reply_post&f=126&t=15258

Edited by Bernice Moore
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