Real story behind the death of JFK

LAST month’s release of thousands of classified documents on the assassination of President Kennedy proved to be a damp squib, and this week journalist friends in Washington confidently told me that they’re certain nothing of any significance will now emerge.

I’ve been predicting this for years. I’ve always believed the mainspring of endless conspiracy theories about JFK’s gruesome end is simple embarrassment. America has always found it hard to accept that a deranged lone gunman with a warped political grudge could have slipped through the security net and killed their president. But he did, and that’s that.

But one small yet telling footnote on the events in Dealey Plaza has yet to be revealed. I am happy to do so here today.

On an autumn day back in 1963 a young Fleet Street reporter, destined to become the editor of the newspaper I would one day work for, flew to Los Angeles from London. Bob Hutchins was desperate to be a reporter in the US. He’d sent dozens of hopeful letters to editors there and after endless rejections had, to his astonishment and excitement, received an invitation from the prestigious LA Times to meet the editor for a 20-minute interview.

With typical American directness, the letter told him he’d either be hired or shown the door at the end of the meeting, so he should consider whether to buy a single or return air ticket. Bob bought a single and crossed the Atlantic with everything crossed.

His plane landed late and the airport taxi delivered him to the LA Times in the nick of time. Racing across the lobby for the lifts and the executive top floor, Bob was vaguely aware of an “atmosphere”. People were milling around, visibly upset. Some were actually crying.

But he crashed on regardless, and found himself on the top floor of the building and walking into the editor’s penthouse suite. The door to the man’s inner sanctum was shut so Bob introduced himself to the gatekeeper, a glamorous blonde PA who sat behind an ornate desk. As he did so, he noticed streaks of wet mascara running down both her cheeks.

“Are you all right?” he asked, hesitantly. “You seem upset. Actually, everyone here does. What’s happened?”

She stared at him, dabbing her eyes. “Haven’t you HEARD? Our president’s just been shot! He’s dead!”

Today, of course, we are all routinely familiar with Kennedy’s assassination. It’s old news. But on that November afternoon, Bob didn’t think for one split second this woman was referring to the President of the United States. He assumed she meant the president of the Los Angeles Times Corporation. And he mentally kicked himself for failing to research the man’s name. He was about to ask, when the editor’s door flew open and the man himself stood there, shirtsleeves rolled up and glasses pushed back on his forehead.

“Bob? Come in. Sit down there. Jeez, you’ve heard what’s just happened?”

Bob nodded. “Yes. I’m so sorry. What a dreadful thing. I...”

“Dreadful? It’s a goddam catastrophe! Brains blown out by a sniper!”

The young reporter nodded. “I see… yes… well…” He decided to come clean. “Do forgive me… what was his name?”

Bob would tell me that the next couple of minutes were a kind of blur. His next clear recollection was being pitched out onto the sidewalk by a burly security guard, and seeing a freshlystacked newspaper stand with the screaming hoarding: “KENNEDY SHOT DEAD IN DALLAS!”

He quietly took a taxi back to the airport and bought a single ticket home. BEST thing about being here in Oz? The weather. Shinybright skies, days flooded with light. If you could bottle it and send it home, the market in anti-depressant pills would collapse overnight.